Xpeng to deliver LiDAR-fitted P5 smart EVs this month, defying Elon Musk’s derision by dialling rivalry with Tesla up a notch

Xpeng Motors has launched the world’s first LiDAR-guided smart vehicle, defying Elon Musk’s derisions in commercialising the laser scanning technology in an electric car for the mass market.

The launch of the P5 is the latest move by Xpeng to chip away at Tesla’s lead in the world’s largest vehicle market, where three of every five new cars on Chinese roads will be powered by electricity by 2030 according to a UBS forecast. Xpeng, whose shares are dual-listed in Hong Kong and New York, is also lavishing its technology credentials to outsmart the traditional carmakers from Honda Motors to Toyota Motor as they too join the fray in the market for so-called new energy vehicles (NEVs).

“We want to build a Chinese-made car that can mount a real challenge to the blockbuster mid-size cars assembled by Sino-foreign joint ventures,” Xpeng’s president Brian Gu said in a telephone interview with South China Morning Post before the online launch by the carmaker’s founder and chief executive He Xiaopeng. “Our P5 will [aim for] China’s middle- and high-income customers who are keen on embracing electrification and digitalisation in mobility.”

The price tag of the top-of-the-range 600P is just shy of the Toyota Camry’s 234,800 price. Camry, assembled in southern China’s Guangzhou city by Toyota’s venture with GAC, has been among the bestselling midsize passenger car in China for the past decade, with 13,955 vehicles delivered in August.

Xpeng, whose investors include this newspaper’s owner Alibaba Group Holding, is a minnow by comparison, delivering 7,214 units of its P7 sedan and G3 sports-utility vehicle in the same month.