Motorists in the UK and EU should not expect a sharp drop in the cost of electric vehicles despite increased competition among Chinese manufacturers, one of the country\u2019s biggest electric carmakers has said.<\/p>\n
Brian Gu, the vice-chair of the manufacturer Xpeng, said that Chinese carmakers could compete on quality to win customers in the EU and UK, rather than unleashing a brutal price war as they have in China<\/a>.<\/p>\n Chinese carmakers have rapidly risen to dominate the global EV industry<\/a>, helped by massive government subsidies and lower labour costs than the US, Europe, Japan and Korea.<\/p>\n The huge number of competitors in China \u2013 129 last year according to the consultancy AlixPartners \u2013 prompted carmakers to slash prices in their home market. China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping, intervened<\/a> last year to tell provincial governments to rein back subsidies in an effort to stem the harm. Faced with such pressure at home, the better-funded Chinese manufacturers, including Xpeng, have turned to Europe to try to make profits.<\/p>\n Xpeng, named after its founder, He Xiaopeng, is still loss-making as it spends heavily on research and on expanding sales of its vehicles in Europe, starting with the \u00a339,990 electric G6. It only sold 7,300 cars in Europe in the first three months of 2026, according to the analyst Matthias Schmidt. However, it is hoping to pick up the pace, and compete against other Chinese companies such as the world\u2019s biggest seller of electric cars, BYD<\/a>, Chery (owner of the Chery, Jaecoo and Omoda brands<\/a>), Changan, Geely and the MG owner SAIC.<\/p>\n Asked about the possibility of a price war in Europe<\/a> to match that of China, Gu said: \u201cI don\u2019t see it coming.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking at an event in London earlier this month, he said that, while some Chinese rivals are \u201cpouring a lot of products\u201d into the UK and Europe, there would not be a race to push down prices. By contrast, Chinese brands in south-east Asia or emerging markets had focused on \u201cjust being cheaper\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the customer in Europe, especially customers in the developed markets, I think the focus is on quality and differentiation more than cost,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Xpeng has drawn comparisons to Elon Musk\u2019s US electric carmaker, Tesla, because of similar minimalist designs and its ambitions to sell humanoid robots. The Chinese company is also developing flying taxis.<\/p>\n For its cars, Xpeng is aiming to differentiate itself with more hi-tech features in its cars, notably on autonomous driving capabilities. The company\u2019s driver assistance features are already widely available, and it is planning to start rolling out robotaxis in its home city of Guangzhou. It could roll out more driverless technology to Europe in the first half of next year if the EU adopts new UN standards.<\/p>\n Gu, a former JP Morgan banker who oversaw Xpeng\u2019s 2020 listing on the New York Stock Exchange, said Xpeng would be able to catch up rapidly with companies such as Google\u2019s sister company Waymo, the Chinese tech company Baidu and the British startup Wayve<\/a>. \u201cWe can accelerate much faster than some of the robotaxi companies,\u201d he said, because the company is unusual in developing cars, computer chips and driverless software at the same time.<\/p>\n The company is also evaluating options to build more cars in Europe. It currently has a deal with Magna, an Austrian contract manufacturer, to produce its cars, but it said struggling European carmakers with too much factory space were \u201ccoming to us with various projects\u201d to sell plants.<\/p>\n Xpeng had previously revealed that Volkswagen \u2013 which partnered<\/a> with the Chinese company in 2023 \u2013 had offered a German plant for sale, but another executive last month said it was \u201ca little bit, I would say, old\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Motorists in the UK and EU should not expect a sharp drop in the cost of electric vehicles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60],"class_list":["post-504600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}