Xpeng defies China’s EV price war with steady sales as Tesla and local rivals try to keep pace

BEIJING — Chinese electric car startup Xpeng is keeping up the sales momentum against its rivals, even as BYD expands on its market dominance amid a fierce price war in China. Xpeng said Tuesday it delivered 34,611 cars in June, its eighth-straight month of delivering more than 30,000 cars. Shares rose more than 2% in New York trading. Xpeng did not specify what portion of the deliveries were for its cars with advanced driver-assist, or for its lower-priced Mona brand. China's electric car price war has only intensified in recent weeks, drawing government criticism for "involution," or excessive, non-productive competition.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday also led a high-level financial and economic commission meeting that called for more governance of "low price, disorderly competition," according to a CNBC translation of Chinese state media. Mixed results for competitors Xpeng's U.S.-listed rivals, which target a more premium segment of China's car market, saw more modest sales momentum. Geely-backed Zeekr reported 16,702 car deliveries in June, down 11.7% from the prior month and 16.9% year over year. Nio reported 24,925 car deliveries in June, a slight increase from May, thanks to growth across its premium "Nio" brand and lower-priced Onvo and Firefly brands. Li Auto reported 36,279 vehicle deliveries in June, a 11.2% drop from May, but its total deliveries in the second quarter came in at 111,074 units, better than the company's lowered guidance of 108,000 cars.

The company on Friday cut its second-quarter delivery outlook by more than 15,000 cars, attributing the decline to an upgrade to its sales system. "Based on our channel checks and analysis, we understand Li Auto has started to prohibit extra rebates [from salespeople sharing their commission with customers] within its sales network since the beginning of June 2025," Nomura analysts said in a report Sunday. They viewed the automaker's moves as an effort to limit competition among its salespeople while focusing on improving services and brand recognition. Most of Li Auto's models are SUVs that come with a fuel tank, which extends the car's driving range and addresses one of the biggest consumer concerns about electric vehicles. Li Auto's monthly deliveries had surpassed 50,000 late last year.

Tesla under pressure Hong Kong-listed Xiaomi reported deliveries of over 25,000 electric cars in June, a slight decrease from the previous month. Less than a day after announcing its new YU7 SUV would be 10,000 yuan ($1,400) cheaper than Tesla's Model Y, the Chinese smartphone maker said its car received more than 240,000 locked-in orders. Xiaomi claimed the YU7 offered a longer driving range than the Model Y, but acknowledged that Tesla's assisted-driving system was more advanced. YU7 SUV deliveries are now slated to take more than half a year, if not much longer, according to Xiaomi's online ordering portal. The company had initially said deliveries would take one to five weeks.

"We believe a significant portion of new orders may come from scalpers, reflecting expectations of extreme popularity for the new model," Junheng Li, CEO, head of research, at JL Warren Capital, said in a note Wednesday. "We estimate [Tesla] Q2 sales in China to be ~128K units, down 12% YoY, pressured by intensifying competition from Chinese brands' new model launches," Li said. Tesla raised its price in China for the Model 3 long-range all-wheel drive by 10,000 yuan, according to its website Tuesday. As of May, Tesla was the fifth-largest automaker by market share in China's new energy vehicle segment, which includes battery-only and hybrid-powered cars. The figures from the China Passenger Car Association showed that Tesla's retail sales in the country for the first five months of the year fell slightly to just over 200,000 vehicles.

Figures for June were not available as of Wednesday morning local time. Leapmotor, which has partnered with Stellantis, the owner of Chrysler and Jeep, for the overseas market, also maintained steady growth in June with record deliveries of 48,006 cars for the month. Aito, which uses Huawei technology for the car's entertainment and driver-assist system, reported 44,685 car deliveries for last month. Competing against a giant BYD remained the market giant, with its passenger car sales edging higher in June to 377,628 vehicles, more than half of which were of battery-only cars. The rest were plug-in hybrid electric cars.

That brought BYD's passenger car sales for the first half of the year to 2.1 million vehicles. In contrast, Leapmotor and Li Auto each saw deliveries of more than 200,000 cars in the first half of the year, while Xpeng came just shy of the benchmark at 197,189 vehicle deliveries. Xiaomi's deliveries for the first half of the year exceeded 150,000 cars, according to CNBC calculations of publicly available figures. BYD, Xiaomi, and Geely will be the most likely to survive any chaotic industry consolidation, predicted Michael Dunne, head of advisory at Dunne Insights. Speaking on CNBC's "The China Connection," he added that Nio might be at risk despite having a great product and "doing all the right things" due to their poor finances.