CEO has revealed the company's key tasks for 2025 and his view of the market in an internal letter, telling employees to prepare for tougher competition.

(An Xpeng P7i on display at the June 2024 new energy vehicle show in Shanghai. Image credit: CnEVPost)

Xpeng (NYSE: XPEV) chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng set the tone for the company's key tasks over the next year in an internal letter, telling his employees to prepare for more intense competition ahead.

“The market will definitely see fiercer competition in 2025, and I can even make a bold prediction that price war will ignite from January,” Mr. He said in the internal letter sent to employees today, according to the full text obtained by CnEVPost.

In 2025-2027, China's auto industry will enter a phase of elimination, the chill of which has been more truly felt across the industry recently, he said.

Join us on or

While new energy vehicle (NEV) penetration is expected to continue to go up, extreme cost control and similarity of configurations will trigger fiercer competition, according to Mr. He.

For vehicle companies that lack intelligence and core competencies including comprehensive R&D and marketing capabilities, they will lose the opportunity for sustained growth, he said.

For Xpeng, one of its core tasks over the next three years is to improve the company's “systemization capabilities,” he said.

Xpeng needs to increase the upper-limit of the company's capabilities through systemic innovation, and also acquire more comprehensive capabilities in the lower-limit front and achieve a balance, he said.

He also emphasized the importance of artificial intelligence (AI), saying that in the next 10 years, Xpeng will be a leading global AI car company, leading in product, business, organization and globalization.

For the international market, the Xpeng CEO said that 2025 will be the year when the company's internationalization strategy will be fully accelerated.

Currently, Xpeng has entered 30 countries and regions, and that number will exceed 60 by the end of next year, Mr. He said.

In the next 10 years, Xpeng aims for half of its sales to come from overseas, becoming the No. 1 Chinese mid-to-high-end NEV brand in terms of overseas sales share, he said.

“This will require close collaboration between international and domestic colleagues in all departments to work together,” he said.

He also repeated his previously mentioned product plan, saying Xpeng will have a new or facelifted model launched almost every quarter in 2025.

Several of these new products are major models that Xpeng has been preparing for years, and they have no rivals in the entire industry in terms of technical strength, he said.

In the next three years, creating a more streamlined product line, differentiation, and globalization on a clear product map is Xpeng's core strategy, he said.

These “ammunitions”, together with the ability to fight in a systematic way, are the key support for Xpeng to win from the elimination round and enter the qualifying round, Mr. He said.

He also mentioned that Xpeng will expand its hiring in 2025, with plans to hire more than 6,000 new employees.

Xpeng welcomes the return of talent who have previously worked at the company but left and encourages employees to tell their former teammates to come back.

Xpeng ships 2nd batch of G6 SUVs to Australia, opens 1st local flagship showroom