Xpeng Motors is going head-to-head with Tesla in China. They recently unveiled their P7 electric sedan which is going to directly rival the American carmaker’s Model 3. Xpeng’s P7 boasts of a longer range and cheaper price. By unveiling the P7 sedan, the battle between both the giants is heated up even further because a few days back, Tesla claimed that an ex-engineer stole confidential information before joining the Chinese company. They even asked a US judge to interfere in the matter to force Xpeng to disclose its autonomous-driving source code to which Xpeng retaliated by saying that Tesla is bullying and trying to disrupt a young competitor.
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If we keep the above-mentioned feud aside for a while and focus on the P7 electric sedan, it actually has the capability to rival Tesla’s Model 3. It’s Guangzhou-based carmaker’s second vehicle and boasts of some interesting numbers. It has a maximum range of 706 kilometers (440 miles) per charge and cost 254,900 yuan ($36,000/ ₹27.43 lakh). They will start delivering the vehicles in September. Now if we compare the specs of P7 Sedan with soon to be launched Tesla Model 3’s longer-range version, the latter is going to cost 344,050 yuan and will have a range of 650 kilometers. The specs make it pretty clear now that the P7 sedan has a longer range while costing less too. They are also sticking their neck out and saying that P7’s features too will allow it to challenge Tesla.
Tesla entered the Chinese market earlier this year and went on to become an instant hit because China is the world’s largest EV market and Tesla has a strong grip over electric vehicle infrastructure. Apart from long-range, P7 also has technology backing it. It is the first production model in any market worldwide powered by NVIDIA’s DRIVE AGX Xavier system-on-a-chip, delivering 30 TROPS (trillions of operations per second) performance while consuming only 30 watts of power.
It also features fast charging which enables it to charge from 30% to 80% in 28 minutes and 120km range in 10 minutes; with China’s first remote-controlled concealed charging plug.