Chinese EV-maker Xpeng has begun its European rollout by delivering the first 100 units of its G3 crossover to customers in Norway. The G3 is priced from 358,000 krone, which converts to roughly $41,000.
The Guangzhou-based company wants to enter other European markets as well, and will spend the next 12 months trying to figure out which country should be next as they lay the groundwork for sales, stated Xpeng president and vice chairman, Brian Gu.
“In the long run, if you want to be a successful EV company, you have to be a global one,” said Gu. “We’re starting the effort to build our presence, doing limited testing in certain markets and treating this as a very long-term strategy.”
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Xpeng chose to enter Europe via Norway thanks to the latter’s supportive government policies, advanced charging infrastructure and high awareness for EVs. Also, even though Norway is a small market overall, nearly 80 percent of vehicles registered there in Q3 of 2020 were the kind you plug in, reports Autonews Europe.
One of the factors that Xpeng needs to consider going forward is whether or not to work with local partners (in Norway they use a local distributor), or to just control its own destiny.
“We’re still in the early innings of this European strategy,” added Gu.
The Xpeng G3 was first unveiled at CES in January of 2018, drawing comparisons to the Tesla Model X – not because of its styling (it’s quite different), but because of its massive portrait-style infotainment display positioned in the center of the dashboard.
