Xpeng may want to be the premium EV leader in the UK by 2030, but it’s not in a rush in 2025 at least. Its first UK model, the G6 SUV Coupé, is a Tesla Model Y-sized car that goes on sale in March. While generically good-looking, and well-sculpted and smoothly surfaced on the outside, its unique selling point may lie within the firm’s strong tech background.

As global president Brian Gu revealed at the brand’s glitzy London launch on the River Thames just across the water from The Shard, 40% of Xpeng’s global staff are employed in research and development roles and half of those have a user experience (UX) focus. This should bode well for the screen tech within Xpeng’s models. Within that realm, Xpeng is also asking for regular customer feedback to inform more numerous ‘over the air’ updates, and in particular to make its safety systems more carefully calibrated – i.e. less needlessly bleepy – than its rivals. 

To help its UK launch, Xpeng has employed long-established sales distributor International Motors Ltd (IML) and Business Car recently had an exclusive chat with IML’s UK MD William Brown about the plans for fleet and beyond. Key to Xpeng’s gradual start is an all-electric approach. That means no need to ‘push-sell’ more EVs than the natural market can stand, in order to meet the latest tough ZEV mandate targets (28% of each carmaker’s sales must be EVs in 2025).

“We do want to sell to fleet and business users, but we’re not going to be aggressively progressing that market,” Brown began. “We will have an offering that’s competitive, but we’re not doing big incentives to grow our market share to hit the ZEV target because we don’t need to. I know other manufacturers have got big targets, because to keep selling ICE vehicles they need to sell a [large] number of electric vehicles.”

Starting small

Brown quotes a modest 2000-vehicle UK registration aim for the nine months left of 2025, after the right-hand drive G6 SUV Coupé goes on sale in March. Starting from £39,990 and available in two options – 270-mile Standard Range and 353-mile Long Range – Brown believes the latter model will start out as the bigger seller. “With our initial orders it’s about 20/80 in favour of the Long Range,” he said. “But we’ll see, because our plan is to go more [retail], which is very difficult. If we do, there’s a likelihood those retail customers may pivot more towards the [cheaper] Standard Range model. Where we would like to be is 60% fleet and 40% retail, but whether that’s achievable or not only time will tell, because there isn’t much of a retail [EV] market at the moment. It’s going to be a challenge.”

Within that overall market picture, treating fleet customers well will be paramount. But if discounts and volume-chasing aren’t on the cards, what’s the UK plan for Xpeng? “We are working with all the leasing and fleet companies and they were actually the first people to see the vehicle, even before the dealers,” said Brown. “That’s because we wanted their feedback in the early days to see what the opportunity was. They were part of our due diligence before we brought Xpeng into the market and the feedback was more positive than we could have hoped or imagined. The G6 is a very similar size to the Tesla Model Y, and a lot of leasing companies have lots of those vehicles on their books, so they’re looking to manage their risk and have alternatives in their portfolios.”

Dealer choice

In terms of fleet support, Xpeng is planning to appoint 20 dealers spread across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2025 and in particular, is seeking dealers with a passion for EVs. “We’re being quite selective who we partner with,” Brown continued, “and we will have some aftersales-only dealers as well, to give more coverage to fleet customers that need convenience.”

By the end of the year there could be a second UK model launch too. Xpeng was formed back in 2014 in Guangzhou, China and has been present in Europe since 2021, with many models in both markets, but the next car for Britain looks likely to be the X9, which Brown describes as a sporty MPV with a high-end interior that is also dynamic to drive (and a long way from a van-derived people carrier). So there’s lots to look forward to, and if Xpeng can get its product, sales and business user support right, plenty for fleets to investigate, as the tech-led brand seeks to become an established part of the UK car parc.