XPENG G6

New mid-sized SUV will carry upmarket Chinese EV maker into UK showrooms

- ILLYA VERPRAET

TESTED 10.6.24, UTRECHT, NETHERLANDS

ON SALE NOVEMBER

Yes, it's another electric SUV out of China that is claimed to be smart, digital-first and sustainable. It has a big touchscreen inside and one of those light bars as well. Novel. The company behind it describes itself as a start-up led by a tech entrepreneur and it has European expansion plans that include the UK (right-hand-drive cars are due in November).

In the bursting-at-the-seams medium electric SUV class that contains the Tesla Model Y, Skoda Enyaq, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and many, many others, Xpeng is going to need something a bit more eye-catching to draw people's attention. It doesn't help that its new G6 looks rather a lot like a Model Y with some slimmer lights.

There are three versions: the single-motor Standard Range, single-motor Long Range and dual-motor Performance. That very closely mirrors Tesla's way of doing things, and the range figures match, almost mile for mile, those for the equivalent Model Ys on 20in wheels.

The G6 has 800V electricals, though, like the Porsche Taycan and various Hyundai Group EVs, which allows seriously fast rapid charging: 215kW for the 66kWh lithium-iron-phosphate battery in the Standard Range or 280kW for the 87.5kWh nickel-manganese-cobalt battery in the Long Range and the Performance. In both cases, that works out to a 10-80% charge in 20 minutes.

TESTER'S NOTE

Both the Long Range and the Performance indicated 3.8mpkWh. That's while keeping below 62mph in the Netherlands, which is famously not very hilly. Still, if accurate, that's an impressive efficiency figure and would translate to a range of 327 miles.