XPENG Motors likely to mass produce cars in 2020

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Guangdong Junhui Automotive Technology Co.,Ltd (JHAT) announced recently that the company has received the sign-on instruction to open a new mould from the Chinese EV startup XPENG Motors. Besides, JHAT predicts that the EV startup will start to mass produce vehicles in 2020 and is expected to achieve revenues of over RMB 100 million from 2020 to 2024. Reportedly, JHAT is XPENG Motors’ designated supplier for top cover of power battery box.

XPENG Motors announced on May 4, 2017 that its vehicle plant was located  in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province with an annual capacity of 100,000 vehicles for the first phase. In the same month, the Guangzhou-based startup completed its Series-A round financing of RMB 2.2 billion from investors like Ucar Industrial Fund.

Then, in January 2018, the company announced the Series-B round funding of RMB 2.2 billion, which was led by Alibaba Group, Foxconn and IDG Capital. In the meantime, XPENG Motors launched its first production vehicle model dubbed the G3, a battery electric model priced between RMB 200,000 to RMB 280,000 before exempting subsidies.

Due to lack of car-building qualification, XPENG Motors signed an agreement with Haima Auto in September, 2017 to entrust vehicle manufacturing to the Hainan-based automaker. According to the initial agreement, the first model agreed by both parties should be mass produced at the end of 2017. Besides, within the 4-year cooperation period, Haima Auto will produce around 50,000 vehicles for XPENG Motors on an annual basis.

The mass production is a barrier for most vehicle startups. For instance, Tesla had planned to mass produce 5,000 units of the Model 3 each week at the end of 2017. But until now, the production goal has not been realized yet. NIO also faces the same dilemma. It was originally ready to deliver 10,000 vehicles before September this year. However, up to now, the startup has only handed over 10 vehicles, which much lags behind its initial schedule.