Record Xpeng Sales in September!

Xpeng enjoyed a big boost in sales from the new MONA M03 in September, leading the Chinese smart EV startup to a new monthly sales record.

Xpeng scored 21,352 deliveries last month, and more than 10,000 of those were the new MONA M03. As we have written a few times, the MONA M03 has the potential to be a top seller not just in China but also globally. Of course, it’s always hard to get a read on which Chinese EVs will actually become big hits globally, but the MONA M03 just seems made for that.

Overall, Xpeng’s year-over-year vehicles sales were up 39% for the month of September. Even more significantly, they were up 52% compared to August 2024. That’s the kind of growth many of us have been expecting from Xpeng. The company develops some of the most high-tech vehicles in the world and produces some of the best value-for-money models. I’ve been bullish on Xpeng for several years now, and remain so, but rising to a mass-market level is without a doubt a huge challenge, and it is heartening to see some strong growth helping it along again.

Looking across the first three quarters of the year combined, Xpeng tells us that sales are up 21% year over year, reaching 98,561 deliveries in that time.

If you extrapolate from September sales, that would be 256,224 electric vehicle sales — no small accomplishment. Genuinely, this is getting to a mass-market scale, especially the more Xpeng becomes a global brand, that could make Xpeng a genuine auto market player among the big boys. Well, it’s on that trajectory. If you use the monthly average for the first 9 months of the year instead and extrapolate out to a full year, you get 131,415, which is still a notable achievement. But that 256,224 figure sure looks a lot more impressive and appealing if Xpeng can reach it.

The good news is, Xpeng’s implied guidance is we can expect more rather than less. “With a broad array of superior configurations and competitive pricing, XPENG MONA M03 has experienced a significant increase in orders since its market launch. XPENG and supply chain partners are sparing no effort to prepare for XPENG MONA M03’s further production ramp-up,” the company writes.

“Additionally, after successful launch events in Madrid and Lisbon in September, XPENG officially introduced the G9, G6 and P7 models to the Spanish and Portuguese markets.

“Looking ahead, the Company expects to unveil XPENG P7+, positioned as AI-defined car, in October 2024. XPENG will also showcase its state-of-the-art AI technologies and applications and its new model lineup at the 2024 Paris Motor Show from October 14 to 21.”

There are a lot of reasons to feel bullish about Xpeng, but, hey, that’s long been my perspective.

Then there’s Xpeng’s ventures into autonomous driving. It seems to have one of the best autonomous driving teams and software suites in the world at the moment. The real marker is when an automaker actually achieves fully driverless driving, but in the meantime, note that Xpeng has supervised self-driving similar to Tesla’s FSD (Full Self Driving). It is called XNGP. Xpeng updates us on its progress: “In September, XNGP’s monthly active user penetration rate in urban driving reached 83%. XPENG rolled out its AI Tianji XOS 5.3 to all eligible owners in China on September 25, enhancing their experience with 32 feature updates and 38 functional upgrades. Empowered by end-to-end large AI models, XPENG’s ADAS features can deliver seamless smart driving on all public roads, including passing electronic toll collection (ETC), navigating U-turns and roundabouts, and much more.” Again, like Xpeng on the whole, I think this technology is a kind of sleeping giant that is progressing nicely with little attention or fanfare (compared to what Tesla and some others get). But we’ll see.