Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker Xpeng unveiled the first budget model under its new brand Mona on Tuesday, taking a step forward in making self-driving technology affordable to low and middle-income consumers on the mainland.
The M03 compact sedan, which is equipped with an advanced driving assistance system and has a range of at least 515km, is expected to mount a challenge to BYD, the world’s largest EV maker.
He Xiaopeng, co-founder and CEO of Guangzhou-based Xpeng, said the new car, priced from 119,800 yuan (US$16,812) to 155,800 yuan, reflects the carmaker’s long-term goal of assembling autonomous EVs targeting mass-market consumers.
“We have seen strong demand from first-time car buyers who are young and have a budget of a little more than 100,000 yuan,” the CEO told a virtual briefing to announce the launch of the M03. “We want to grant them their wish with intelligent cars that can match their budget.”
The company did not say when the M03 cars will be delivered to buyers.
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Xpeng currently builds intelligent EVs priced above 200,000 yuan. The CEO told an EV forum in Beijing in March that models under the Mona brand would be equipped with autonomous driving systems and priced between 100,000 yuan and 150,000 yuan.
He added that Mona cars could be developed into fully autonomous vehicles in the future at about the same price, as the company makes rapid technological advances and improves its manufacturing efficiency.
“Young drivers in China are price conscious and they normally have a budget of around 100,000 yuan,” said Tian Maowei, a sales manager at Yiyou Auto Service in Shanghai. “Xpeng’s new cars with preliminary autonomous driving systems can be a good option for many.”
At the end of July, Xpeng said it had expanded the use of its self-driving system to all cities in China in a bid to attract more buyers ahead of Tesla’s roll-out of its Full Self-Driving software, which has not yet been approved for use in the country but is expected to enter testing at the end of this year.
The move has made Xpeng the first mainland carmaker to make a semi-autonomous driving system available nationwide.
Last Tuesday, the company said its deliveries in the third quarter could jump by as much as 49 per cent to 45,000 units. Xpeng reported a net loss of 1.28 billion yuan for the three months to June, narrowing from the 1.37 billion yuan loss in the preceding three months.
Xpeng’s move to launch the Mona sub-brand comes close on the heels of Shanghai-based Nio’s debut of the Onvo sub-brand in May.
Nio’s premium EVs are priced at more than 300,000 yuan.
The first Onvo model, the L60 SUV, starts at 219,900 yuan, 12 per cent cheaper than the basic edition of Tesla’s Shanghai-made Model Y.
Inexpensive battery-powered cars have helped accelerate the transition of China’s automotive industry from petrol to EVs. Currently, about half of the new cars sold on the mainland are powered by batteries.