Volkswagen and X-Peng join forces in electric vehicles
- Volkswagen and the Chinese X-Peng are joining forces to develop battery electric vehicles. The German carmaker has decided to take a 5% stake in the Chinese carmaker which was founded in 2014 and which specializes in the design and production of battery electric vehicles. In China, the two carmakers will sell approximately the same number of electric vehicles in 2023, or around 150,000 units each. Volkswagen's association with X-Peng will expand the range of battery electric vehicles to B-segment models which will be marketed in China from 2026.
- Volkswagen's battery electric platform currently only covers cars in the C-D-E segments represented by the ID3, ID4, ID5, ID6 and ID7. For the B segment, a new platform is being born to give birth in Europe to the future ID1 and ID2, but the carmaker seems to be choosing another platform for China (which will not developed with Renault).
- This association aims above all to reduce the costs of battery electric vehicles in B-segment in order to obtain the lowest possible selling price.
- Remember that there are currently no battery electric B-segment models either in the Volkswagen range or in the X-Peng range. The targeted models are the BYD Seagull (280,000 sales in 2023) and Wuling Bingo (235,000 sales in 2023) which alone each represent almost twice the total sales of battery electrics Volkswagen or X-Peng . The two carmakers believe that the Chinese market for B-segment BEVs is expected to grow during this decade (vehicles for younger generations or second vehicles for relatively wealthy families).