XPeng’s New ‘Budget’ EV Looks Like a Ferrari Luce

While you are walking in XPeng’s Munich exhibition, you are greeted by, I kid you not, a huge wooden Trojan horse. Not exactly a subtle message from the Chinese brand announcing its first global production of an electric car, behind a German factory.

It’s hard to believe that XPeng was launched 12 years ago. However by 2020 it had already been shipped EVs in Norway, marking the beginning of the Chinese company’s European journey.

Look at the top 10 EV manufacturers in China are volume, and you won’t find XPeng, but it is growing and has made a big reputation outside of their country. Now it wants to go global with its latest version, the L03the first new car to be launched in 60 countries in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

L03 is XPeng’s big game because this is its “budget”, starting at €35,600 (about $40,000), its price is below it. G6 Tesla Model Y competition, and sales volume.

Yes, L03 is a player in the corporate market. Despite the high prices, XPeng has tried to make it stand out: 320-mile WLTP range; quick payment from 10 to 80 percent in 20 minutes; panoramic glass roof; heated seats and fixed massage; 256-color round lighting; an impressive 0.228 pull ratio for maximum compression; intelligent suspension; 15.6-inch 2.5K central screen; 27-inch HUD; AI-powered voice control; and even Google Maps built in.

All of this and more comes as standard, whether you go for the vanilla, Long Range, AWD, or Ultra models. The word XPeng still uses to shame the economy is “overclass.” It wants the L03 to go toe-to-toe with EVs in the segment above it—cars like the Volkswagen ID.4.

Procedure? Well, the five-seat, 4,650-mm L03 can hit 0 to 60 mph in 4.5 seconds on top models, but that drops to 7.5 seconds on the Standard Range base version.

Photo: Courtesy of XPeng

While other types of L03 are Level 2 of driving independentlyUltra bumps to L2++ for next-gen point-to-point, point-to-point navigation that should come to Europe in 2027 (thanks to XPeng’s three Turing 7-nanometer AI chips). An on-air switch is all that is required to activate the eyes on/hands off system.

This is all, on paper, great value for money. L03 owners will get a lot of EV for their money. But it’s not all loud. In China, the L03 is called the Mona L03 because it is part of XPeng’s budget Mona sub-brand. XPeng doesn’t want to highlight this point, and I’ve been told that the update is for the “non-Mona” L03 world, which I think is meant to justify the name.

For L4 autonomy in the future, although the Ultra L03 has the brains to work at the same level, Xianming Liu, XPeng’s head of engineering, tells me that the car does not have equipment that meets the six required parameters. This EV “budget” will not be allowed to exceed L2++ skills.