Tesla’s Replica: Xpeng Car
Tesla’s Ideology
Have you heard the brand name of Tesla? The first all-electric car which was researched, made, assembled and designed in the United States of America.
The Chinese electric car was built with technology Tesla gave away for free. Tesla open sourced their technology in 2014 with the intention of allowing others to legally copy their designs and technology.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla always said that the mission of the company is to accelerate the advent of electric transport (and later they added renewable energy). He further said with respect to open sourcing their patents, “I hope it would inspire others to create environmentally friendly cars”.
Read about Elon Musk here
Xpeng
A young Chinese engineer created a startup based on Tesla’s open technology. Henry Xia founded the company, Xiaopeng Motors in 2014, exactly the same year when Tesla open sourced its patents. Three years later, in last quarter of 2017, they announced the “beta version” of their first car, the Xpeng, an all-electric SUV.
Henry Xia’s thoughts
We believe it is a great time for the automobile industry to evolve, Automobiles are getting smarter and all intent connected. We can see this trend in car costs and sales pipelines. The definition and value of automobiles will change greatly. Current changes, we believe, brought big opportunities to new teams that have an internet background, said by Henry Xia, co-founder, and President of Xiaopeng Motors.
The Xpeng car will cost a fraction of the price of Tesla’s car. It has actually many similarities with the Tesla Model X. Like including the same design of battery packing, the same touch screen as the main control center of the car. Xiaopeng company plans similar autonomous and assisted driving features as Tesla. Things have been going in favor for the company. They recently introduced first 15 Xpeng vehicles. Now they are looking for capital to expand production facility at a factory in Zhengzhou.
What do you think would it become a threat to the pioneers in the fully electric car, i.e. Tesla? Let us know in the comment section below.
