Tesla Rival XPeng Inc. to Start Deliveries of its New Flagship G9 Electric SUV in September, CEO Confirms After Sharing New Details

author: Eric Walz   

The XPeng G9.

The launch of the new flagship G9 electric SUV from Tesla rival XPeng Inc is moving forward as planned, the company's Chairman and CEO, He Xiaopeng, wrote on Chinese microblogging site Weibo on Wednesday. 

XPeng unveiled the new G9 SUV at the Guangzhou Auto Show in Nov 2021. However, the company did not share  more information at last year's launch event, saying that more details would be announced at the Beijing Auto Show in April 2022. However, the Beijing Auto Show was postponed due to the Covid outbreak.

So on Wednesday, Mr. He took to Weibo to provide an update on the progress of the G9, saying that many people are interested in the official launch and want to learn more about the EV. The Weibo post was reported by local news outlet CnEVPost.

XPeng will begin taking orders for the new G9 in August, with the first customer deliveries still on track for September. 

XPeng's G9 will be the company's most advanced vehicle to date. For one, its uses a 800-volt system architecture, which is also used for the Porsche Taycan and Lucid Air sedan. The G9 can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 3 seconds. The 800-volt architecture also allows for rapid charging, adding 200 km (124 miles) range in just 5 minutes. 

The G9 has a range of over 700 kilometers (435 miles) on a charge.

Mr. He compared the rapid charging of the G9 to the advancements in cellular technology over the past decade.

"To give an inaccurate example, it's like charging efficiency crossed from the 2G to 5G era all at once," He said.

As XPeng expands outside of its home market, the new premium battery-powered G9 was conceived and designed from the start for both domestic Chinese and international markets. XPeng's first overseas market was Norway in 2020, before expanding to the Netherlands.

The G9 Will Rival Much More Expensive Vehicles From Luxury German Automakers

The XPeng G9 is a large five-seat smart luxury SUV with a wheelbase of nearly 3 meters, which Mr. He says it is just the right size for most SUV buyers. It will also offer a suspension that will rival much more expensive vehicles from luxury German automakers.

The G9's chassis was tuned by a team of top German engineers, giving the handling a premium feel comparable to the Porsche Cayenne and its quietness comparable to the flagship Mercedes-Benz GLS Maybach, said Mr He.

"It's no exaggeration to say that we have achieved a re-evolution of air suspension in the G9 that overturns industry perceptions," he wrote.

The G9 will feature an intelligent dual-chamber air suspension system that can anticipate road conditions in advance and actively adjust the suspension through the predictive ability of pre-sensing hardware and high precision maps, according to Mr He. said.

Mr. He said this suspension setup is usually only found in million-dollar luxury cars. But the G9 will have a much lower price. 

"I am confident in this flagship product of XPeng, which will be the best SUV within RMB 500,000 ($74,550)," he said. "For us, it means that we do what others have failed to do, and at the same time do what others do better."

The G9 will feature an intelligent dual-chamber air suspension system that can anticipate and adapt to road conditions in advance. 

The interior features a "VIP luxury" interior with the industry's first 5D smart cockpit that offers an immersive experience. Passengers can enjoy movies, music or games in the car.

The G9 is China's first 800V EV to use a silicon carbide (SiC) inverter. 

In an electric vehicle, the inverter converts direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC) and controls the flow of electricity from the battery or from the battery pack to the electric motor(s). The use of a silicon carbide inverter allows for a more rapid flow of power when the driver demands it, such as during hard acceleration. 

Since more power is made available at the wheels, This allows automakers like XPeng the option of using smaller electric motors without sacrificing performance. But another benefit is that the motors can be made lighter and operate more efficiently, which can help to extend range. 

The G9 is also XPeng's first production model to use the automaker's new X-EEA 3.0 electronic and electrical architecture, which includes a centralized supercomputing platform and local control modules. The G9 also features the latest version of the automaker's advanced driver assistance system called "XPILOT 4.0", which offers advanced autonomous driving capabilities.

XPILOT 4.0 is built on an entirely hardware platform powered by dual NVIDIA DRIVE Orin processors. The system delivers a whopping 508 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) of compute power and acts as the brains of the vehicle.

The full-stack XPILOT system is equipped with dual lidar units. Mr. He describes it as the "safest and best end-to-end intelligent assisted driving, hardware, software and data operations."

The XPILOT 4.0 autonomous driving platform is further bolstered by an 8-million-pixel front-view binocular camera and 2.9-million-pixel side-view cameras (covering front, rear, left and right view). The enhanced hardware suite will significantly increase the perception capability of XPILOT, according to Mr. He.

At the software level, the G9's vehicle architecture is structured in layers, which includes a system software platform, foundation software platform and intelligent application platform. The individual software layers allow for faster development and iteration of vehicle functions, such as advanced driver assistance and voice control.

The G9 will also be China's first EV to implement a Gigabit Ethernet communications architecture, supporting multiple communication protocols, allowing vehicles to transmit and receive data much faster. The faster data transfers support the G9's advanced driver assistance, smart vehicle systems. But it also allows for faster OTA firmware updates.

To support the charging needs of G9 customers, XPeng will gradually roll out its 800V/480kW supercharging network over the next 12 months, according to Mr. He.

Earlier this month, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the latest group of models permitted to be sold in China for comment. The G9 was included on the list, which reconfirms its upcoming launch.

Eric Walz

Originally hailing from New Jersey, Eric is a automotive & technology reporter covering the high-tech industry here in Silicon Valley. He has over 15 years of automotive experience and a bachelors degree in computer science. These skills, combined with technical writing and news reporting, allows him to fully understand and identify new and innovative technologies in the auto industry and beyond. He has worked at Uber on self-driving cars and as a technical writer, helping people to understand and work with technology.