Xpeng predicts it will deliver fewer electric cars than Nio

BEIJING – Chinese electric car maker Xpeng plans to deliver significantly fewer cars than rival startup Nio in the first three months of the year.

New York-listed Xpeng announced overnight that it would likely deliver around 12,500 vehicles in the first quarter. This implies deliveries of 4,250 cars for March, based on January’s 6,015 figure, and a drop to 2,223 in February.

Even taking into account the week-long Lunar New Year holiday in mid-February, those numbers are lower than Nio’s.

Last week, Nio forecast deliveries of 20,000 to 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which implies deliveries of at least 7,197 cars in March. The company only ships SUVs at the moment and sells them in a higher price range than Xpeng cars.

While Nio plans to deliver a sedan to customers early next year, Xpeng launched its P7 sedan last year, which accounted for a growing share of deliveries compared to its G3 SUV. Xpeng plans to release another sedan later this year.

Li Auto, another Chinese electric car maker listed in the United States, gave the lowest forecast of the three startups, with 10,500 to 11,500 deliveries for the first quarter.

Despite the attention paid to start-ups like Nio and Xpeng, former automakers Tesla and BYD are already selling electric cars in China on a much larger scale. In January alone, Tesla sold more than 14,500 Chinese-made Model 3s and BYD more than 7,200 of its Han Model, according to figures released by the China Passenger Car Association on Tuesday.

After surging in 2020, shares of US-listed electric car companies have fallen over the past two months amid a volatile start to the year in the US stock market.

• Xpeng shares have fallen almost 4% overnight and more than 35% for the year so far.
• Nio has fallen 7.6% overnight and more than 25% since the start of the year.
• Li Auto shares are down 5% to start the week and are down 26% for the year so far.
• Tesla shares have fallen more than 5% in Monday’s session and 20% for the year so far.

As Nio, Tesla and other automakers rush to develop autonomous driving technology, Xpeng has started rolling out its autonomous driving software to some high-end P7 sedan customers this year. The technology allows users to automate tasks such as changing lanes and entering and exiting freeways.

About a fifth of the more than 20,100 P7 sedans delivered in February activated the latest autonomous driving software, management said during a call for results.

Xpeng said total revenue increased 43% from the third quarter to 2.85 billion yuan ($ 437 million) in the fourth quarter. The company expects its revenues to decline slightly to 2.6 billion yuan in the first quarter.

Net losses narrowed to 787.4 million yuan in the last three months of the year, from 1.15 billion yuan in the previous quarter.