The Chinese electric automaker, Xpeng Motors has secured a pass to test out its new sport sedan on American roads as the company prepares to compete right next to the home-grown Tesla in the US market.
This came amid the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration which granted a vehicle import license to the Guangzhou-based company earlier this month. That permit will grant Xpeng to test it’s cars on open roads in the US. This announcement was made on Tuesday to confirm the grant by the US agency in charge of licensing.
Xpeng’s sports sedan, P7 is the second production model of the company with a drive range of about 706KM per single charge making it the longest among electric cars being sold in China. The confirmation about the range was made by the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
As expected, the test in the US will help in supplementing the company’s research in China even though the company might not be heading over to t he US market just too soon, He Xiaopeng, the company’s co-founder and CEO made it known that “Currently, our main focus is to bring the P7 to the Chinese market,” he said, “ensuring quality production and mass delivery in the second half of the year and providing customers with the best post-sales services.”
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Having said that, He added that the company has a strategic plan for overseas expansion.
Xpeng is backed by big companies like AliBaba, IDG Capital and Xiaomi and a host of other rich tech companies in the country and outside of it.
While still being 5 years old, Xpeng remains a prominent player in the EV industry in China and hopes to compete right up against Tesla.
The P7, premiered at the Shanghai Auto Show last April, retails at between 240,000 yuan (US$34,240) and 370,000 yuan, nearly a third of the price of a Tesla Model S in China. Xpeng earlier said it had more than 15,000 pre-orders as of November.
The car will be the first production model smart vehicle to have the AliBaba in-car Mini Application which gives users a suite of in-car digital information and entertainment functionalities.
Xpeng has also received a renewed autonomous vehicles testing permit from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles, according to the company.
Tesla moved it’s production division to China making it go right up next to Xpeng in the Electric Vehicle industry. And as it is, Xpeng is determined to be one of the prominent player in the industry.
