The Chinese Billionaire Whose Robots and Cars Should Worry Detroit—and Silicon Valley
Billionaire He Xiaopeng has a certain daringness—and finally, real revenue growth.
For years, Chinese billionaire He Xiaopeng has been pegged as an Elon Musk wannabe, and his electric vehicle company, XPeng, as a mere Tesla copycat. And until recently the company seemed laggardly, raising questions about whether it would survive.
All of that is changing quickly. In other words, XPeng has moved up a stair from the realm of mere novelty to unignorable player with intimidating products and shrewd commercial instincts. He may soon be a force that Silicon Valley and Detroit alike must reckon with.
The 12-year-old company is on a roll: Its car sales are on track to more than double year on year in 2025 to more than 400,000 units, driven by demand for the Mona M03, a $17,000 EV; its share price has more than doubled year to date; and it seems to be on track to notch its first profitable quarter. XPeng has just released a knock-your-socks-off $30,700 luxury sedan, and it could end the year as the world’s sixth or seventh largest EV seller, neck and neck with Hyundai Motor, regarded as one of the industry’s best EV makers.
He’s next two products, which he will unveil later this month, will show him starting to break away from his image as Musk Lite: XPeng will introduce the latest version of Iron, its humanoid robot. Then, in an event in Dubai, it will launch the X3-F, a $280,000 minivan whose features will include a two-passenger electric helicopter folded up in the back—a product that even the famously iconoclastic Musk has not attempted.
If He is trying too hard or reaching too far, Chinese first movers are reaching with him. In an appearance I attended last month in Munich, He said XPeng had 6,000 pre-orders for the vehicle, including from two aviation companies that intend to use them for high-end tours of the Yangtze River Delta. He has plans to export them, though that will be subject to often strict regulation in each country.
“It’s dead serious,” Bill Russo, a former Chrysler executive in China and now CEO of Automobility, a Shanghai-based auto industry consulting firm, told me of the minivan-helicopter. “First of all, it grabs everyone’s attention, which is the point. It gets talked about, written about. They are dead serious about delivering it and showing that they have the chops to be able to engineer a product like that.”
In terms of its sales potential, Russo said, “It’s China, and you got that many rich people that want to have the cool crap.”
Next year is shaping up to be even better: On top of commercially releasing its humanoid robot and minivan-helicopter, XPeng plans to launch a driverless robotaxi powered by its own artificial intelligence chip, which the company also uses in its other products. In a licensing deal, XPeng will supply the guts and software for two Volkswagen-branded electric SUVs to be released in China, and will also provide its technology for the German giant’s combustion cars for the country, validation for XPeng as a go-to tech partner to the West.
In multiple ways, XPeng is a portrait of what most big and small Western rivals would like to be but aren’t—technologically and commercially daring, sexy and, perhaps most pointedly, possibly about to be profitable with its EVs.
If He did ever follow Musk, he is no longer doing so blindly, as is apparent in the two companies’ disparate visions for the mass market: Last year, Musk abandoned his long-stated goal of making a $25,000 EV for everyone; XPeng last year introduced the $17,000 Mona, which rapidly became the company’s most popular car and, according to He, already makes money.
I became convinced about XPeng on seeing and climbing into its flagship sedan, the newly redesigned P7. Rafik Ferrag, the car’s chief interior designer, told me the idea was to give it the elegant lines and broad stance of an ultrapremium luxury model and the roomy interior and plush upholstery of a first-class airplane cabin. I can tell you that the driver’s seat grabs your body in a snug, extravagant embrace. You sink sumptuously into the rear seat, which offers the legroom of a limousine. Everything is voice activated, or if you prefer, you can use the touchscreens in front and back. The base price is $30,700 in China—$42,000 fully loaded. Climbing out, my thought was: Watch out for XPeng.
In Munich, He spoke first to an audience in a global telecast, then went upstairs in an exhibition booth to meet with journalists. Among other things, he talked up the minivan-helicopter, which can be manually operated using a control stick and can also fly itself via an autonomous function. “We have to face the transformation of the transportation industry,” he said. “We know that cars were born in Germany. And airplanes were also born 100 years ago.…Now we want to organically combine cars and aircraft.
“We are not sure about the recognition or acceptance of our customers yet,” He said, but “our flying vehicle is easy to use, which means that you can land the aircraft in your own garage. And it can take off very safely and easily in a neighborhood.”
Should General Motors or Ford show some daring themselves and go into flying cars and robots? Perhaps—if they could pull it off.
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XPeng is an example of how, across cutting-edge technology and products such as AI, EVs and robots, Chinese companies have proven to be extremely capable innovators. To a massive degree, they have also outdone U.S. companies in their capacity to rapidly deploy products, then drive down costs by building enormous plants to manufacture them.
One thing I noticed about the XPeng group was that, as much as they talk about edgy products and gadgetry, they were if anything understating the capabilities and timelines.
Take Wang Tan, vice president and chief designer of XPeng’s electric aviation unit, who designed the minivan-helicopter.
The company’s aviation efforts go back to 2021. XPeng threw $500 million at its electric aviation unit, and He set a deadline of 2024 for it to roll out an electric helicopter. Wang just missed—XPeng unveiled the aircraft in January.
Now the vehicle containing the helicopter is on track for release in the second half of next year: Last month, regulators in the United Arab Republic granted XPeng the right to fly the aircraft in tests, which it plans to do this month. Wang said he expects Chinese certification by the end of the year so the company can start selling it.
Wang does not expect owners to use the aircraft in cities, except perhaps for emergency medical teams. Instead, owners would drive to rural areas and fly from there. The aircraft have a range of nine to 15 miles and can fly at 180 miles an hour before the battery runs out; the battery in the SUV can recharge the aircraft six times, he said.
Wang obviously does not regard the vehicle as outlandish. What he does treat as a stretch is the actual flying car XPeng unveiled in Munich: a truly James Bondian vehicle that would allow people stuck in traffic, for instance, to lift off and get to an appointment.
This is a stretch but it’s not totally bonkers: XPeng actually flew a prototype of the flying car publicly in 2022. It was loud and slow. And it flew for just three minutes before it had to land because, at 1.6 tons, the batteries required to make it fly any real distance don’t exist today. But it is still rather mind-boggling that the car could fly at all.
I asked Wang what kind of battery would be necessary. He said the car would need roughly four to eight times the capability of current state-of-the-art EV batteries. “There is just too much deadweight,” he said.
I noted that no mainstream battery researchers appear even to be working on such a battery. That’s just a matter of time, he responded. “It will take 10 or 15 years,” he said.
This is why both Detroit and Silicon Valley have reason to worry: XPeng looks likely to not only sell a lot of cars in and outside China, but introduce a gonzo new idea of a car-and-tech company.
“If you look at all the major tentacles that they’re getting into, these are huge, huge, huge potential markets—robotics, flying cars, autonomy and [chips],” said Tu Le, a consultant on the Chinese car industry. “So technically, if they hit a bunch of triples, they’re going to be a pretty successful company.”