706km Xpeng P7 trumps Tesla
Little-known Chinese brand Xpeng has launched a battery-electric sports sedan with a Tesla-beating claimed 706km range between recharges.
Somewhat immodestly, Guangzhou-based Xpeng bills the new P7 as a “super-long range, high-performance, fast-charging intelligent EV sports sedan”.
To that they could add pretty cheap, as the P7 is now on-sale in China starting as low as approximately $52,000 Aussie dollars.
The 706km range – measured in China using the NEDC methodology – tops the Tesla Model S, which in its new Long Range spec can travel more than 600km between recharges.
So what are the key technical features of the P7?
At its core is a CATL prismatic 80.9kWh battery pack that is just 110mm thick, offers an energy density of 170Wh/kg and can fast-charger from 30 to 80 per cent in 28 minutes.
That works with a three-in-one electric drive system with a claimed motor energy density of 2.0kW/kg and efficiency up to 97.5 per cent.
The P7 is also claimed to accelerate from 0-100km/h in 4.3 seconds.
It will be available in eight configurations across three versions: all-wheel drive high performance, rear-wheel drive super long range and rear-wheel drive long range (568km).
Xpeng is also touting the cutting edge software of the P7. It comes with level 3 autonomy, NVIDIA’s DRIVE AGX Xavier system-on-a-chip that delivers 30 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) performance and an Infineon 950 IGBT module, delivering up to 580A to its motor for continuous 40 seconds.
The P7 is the second model from the Chinese start-up following on from the G3 SUV.
No word yet on whether Australia will be a market for the XPeng.
