Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng hinted that he is confident to deal with the price cut of Tesla's SUV Model Y and the launch of the new Model 3 sedan.
In an update in his WeChat circle of friends, he said, "We are quite confident to respond to this price cut by our competitor on New Year's Day, without even having an internal conference call."
He didn't directly name Tesla, though he was clearly talking about Tesla's price cut.
The data also fully proves that the price cut has proven to be just a marketing approach and also a double-edged sword for sure, he said, adding that Xpeng will also work hard to complete the 3.0 OTA before Chinese New Year and look forward to bringing a new experience to users.
The China-made Model Y went on sale at a substantially lower price than the previous imported version, sparking concerns about the prospects of Tesla's Chinese rival.
On January 1, China-made Model Y was launched with starting prices of RMB 339,900 and RMB 369,900 for the long-range and high-performance versions, respectively, a significant price reduction of RMB 148,100 and RMB 165,100 from the previous imported version.
Rumors then surfaced that Tesla's direct competitor, Nio, suffered a massive backorder on the day the Model Y went on sale.
In response, Nio responded, "The news that the official website system suffered a massive backorder is untrue, and we have already launched a complaint against the relevant platform."
William Li, chairman, founder and CEO of Nio, also said that Tesla Model Y had not affected Nio, and there was no major change in the order volume in the past two days.
On January 1, Xpeng announced a partnership with DJI-incubated Livox to use Livox's customized vehicle-grade LiDAR for its new production model to be launched in 2021.
Livox's customized version of LIDAR can provide Xpeng with a detection distance of 150 meters and an ultra-wide point cloud field of view of 150°-180° in front of the entire vehicle, helping Xpeng XPILOT autonomous driving assistance system to achieve over-the-top detection of distant obstacles in scenarios such as highways and urban roads.
Currently, Xpeng already has several modules of autonomous driving architecture for production vehicles. With the addition of LIDAR, the perception capability of the whole vehicle can be further improved.
In contrast, Tesla has repeatedly attacked the prospect of LIDAR in driverless applications in public, and does not leave itself a little "back way".
Previously, there were comments that Tesla's FSD chip and Hardware 3.0 computing platform were not designed with a LIDAR interface. This means that if you want to install LIDAR, you have to redesign the chip and computing platform.
