XPeng CEO Responds to Elon Musk Posting “China’s EVs Lead the World”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on Twitter and Chinese social media platform Weibo on Monday, saying, “Few seem to realize that China is leading the world in renewable energy generation and electrical vehicles. Whatever you may think of China, this is simple a fact.” He Xiaopeng, the CEO of domestic EV firm XPeng Motors, then forwarded and commented on iFeng’s report on Musk’s Weibo post.

He commented: “I don’t quite know about renewable energy power generation. China is only at a forefront position of the world in the field of electric vehicles. To lead the world, it is necessary to lead in technology and products. More importantly, China has to lead in the global market and realize win-win results in business, which will take at least 10 years of efforts. More than 10 years ago, we had similar perceptions on the mobile internet, but once a real science and technology battle started, China’s global leading points on the mobile internet would not be enough.”

According to the statistics of China’s National Energy Administration, the installed capacity of renewable energy in China exceeded 1 billion kilowatts in 2021, and the installed capacity of wind power and photovoltaic power generation both exceeded 300 million kilowatts. By the end of 2021, the installed capacity of renewable energy power generation in China reached 1.063 billion kilowatts, accounting for 44.8% of the total installed power generation capacity. Specifically, hydropower was 391 million kilowatts, wind power was 328 million kilowatts and photovoltaic was 306 million kilowatts.

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Technology research company Canalys released a report early this year, claiming that the global sales of electric vehicles in 2021 was 6.5 million units, an increase of 109% from 2020, accounting for 9% of all passenger car sales. However, affected by the continuing COVID-19 pandemic and global chip shortage, the global automobile market only grew by 4% in 2021.

According to the report, in 2021, the Chinese mainland sold 3.2 million electric vehicles, accounting for half of the global electric vehicle sales, and 2 million more than the sales in 2020. Specifically, the Wuling Hongguang Mini EV manufactured by SAIC-GM-Wuling was the best-selling EV model in Chinese mainland in 2021. Tesla took the second and third place, with its Model Y surpassing the Model 3.