If you want to know why the most technologically advanced cars are currently built in China rather than the United States or Europe, two numbers describe the breakneck pace of innovation there.
Fifty represents the penetration rate of so-called new energy vehicles (NEVs) as a share of the overall Chinese market. In other words, an EV or plug-in hybrid constitutes every other new car sold last year.
The second number, 55.7, represents the percentage of NEVs sold last year that came equipped with “hands-off” automated driving assist systems, similar to features like Tesla’s Full Self-Driving or Ford’s BlueCruise.
To put that in perspective, when He Xiaopeng helped found New York–listed Chinese EV maker XPeng back in 2014, these figures were both below 1%.
“One can tell that great improvements in development have been witnessed in China for the past decade,” said He, speaking on Tuesday at his global brand night held this year in Hong Kong, where his premium X9 family van was the star of the show.
Ten years may seem like quite a while in the consumer electronics industry, but in the safety-obsessed auto business, it is roughly the time span of one full product life cycle, starting with the design of a new model and ending with its final year of production.
By comparison, overall U.S. sales of EVs and plug-in hybrids are only roughly 11% of its light vehicle market, with Europe higher at 23%.
When it comes to driver assist features, it’s difficult to find directly comparable stats.
But using Tesla as a proxy, the most technologically advanced hands-off feature is present in perhaps only a quarter of its cars, and CEO Elon Musk cut the price twice to spur demand.
U.S. and European policymakers are now forced to slap on steep tariffs to prevent their home markets from being inundated with affordable Chinese EVs.
But CEO He is optimistic about XPeng making an impact abroad, too: “Over the next decade we aim for over half of our sales to come from overseas, striving to really dominate as China’s leading mid- to high-end export brand.”
Recently, Volkswagen—for decades the undisputed market leader in China thanks to its first-mover advantage—has entered into a direct partnership with He’s XPeng.
With the money he made from selling popular mobile browser provider UCWeb to Alibaba, He launched EV maker XPeng.
