The new generation sales champion is back, and Xiaopeng can't afford to miss this battle.

On the evening of April 2, the 2026 Xpeng MONA M03 officially went on sale.

The new car is offered in six versions, with the manufacturer’s suggested retail price maintained in the range of 119.8k to 151.8k yuan. The refresh strategy is very clear: no change to the starting price, but comprehensive configuration upgrades.

Wallstreet Journal Insight learned that 37 minutes after the new car’s launch, the number of large deposits had already exceeded 10,000 units, with the Max version accounting for over 85% of the order mix.

As the key model that once pulled Xpeng from a sales trough, this facelift of the MONA M03 not only shoulders the responsibility of boosting sales, but also ties into the strategic direction for Xpeng after its renaming to “Xpeng Group.”

0137 minutes, break 10,000

The 2026 MONA M03 is seeing a substantial upgrade.

In terms of exterior, it adds two new color options: Roland Purple and Avocado Green. The clear-coat thickness is 20% higher than the industry average, and gloss level is up by 8%. The share of soft-touch upholstery in the interior exceeds 70%. The front row has 14-point massage seats and a 20-speaker HIFI-level audio system, paired with double-layer laminated soundproof glass and RNC active noise reduction technology. In the past, these configurations were typically found only in higher-priced models.

But the real highlight lies in the downscaling of the intelligent driving system.

The new car offers two computing-power versions: Max and Ultra SE. The Max version uses a single Turing AI chip with effective computing power of 750 TOPS. The Ultra SE version is equipped with dual Turing AI chips, delivering up to 1,500 TOPS. He Xiaopeng introduced that this is the first time in the world that this tier of computing power has been brought into a 20k-dollar-plus (20k美元) class vehicle. At the press conference, he said plainly: “This time, we really put 500k-yuan-class intelligent driving and 200k-yuan-class comfort into a 110k-yuan car.”

On pricing, the 2026 Xpeng MONA M03 comes in six configurations, priced from 119.8k to 151.8k yuan. The starting price remains the same as the old model. Of the six trims, four versions increase content without increasing price, while the other two newly added higher-trim versions raise the price band by 12k yuan.

He Xiaopeng revealed that the gross margin of the new MONA M03 is even higher than the previous model. The market’s doubts about whether “more content without higher price” would affect profitability have also been addressed.

He Xiaopeng further clarified: “I don’t think it’s valuable to make cheap, low-profit cars. We won’t make cars within 100k yuan, even though there may be scale, I feel the value is too small.”

In other words, Xpeng doesn’t plan to trade low prices for higher volume. Instead, it wants to achieve differentiation within the 110k to 150k yuan price band by leveraging intelligent driving and upgraded configurations.

The market has provided positive feedback as well. The number of large deposits broke 10,000 within 37 minutes, and the Max version’s order share exceeded 85%, meaning more than 80% of users are willing to pay a premium for higher-end intelligent driving.

Looking back to 2024, the launch of the original MONA M03 was the turning point for Xpeng’s jump in sales.

Wallstreet Journal Insight learned that in 2025, the MONA M03 sold 197.5k units for the full year, accounting for 46% of Xpeng’s total full-year sales, and it ranked first for 18 consecutive months in the pure-electric compact sedan segment with 100k to 200k yuan price tags. This is a “workhorse” car that truly delivers in both financial and market terms.

But entering 2026, competition in the new energy vehicle market shows no signs of easing, and Xpeng’s sales pressure is increasing too. Choosing to launch the 2026 MONA M03 at this time was right on schedule.

As a sales pillar for Xpeng, in January and February, the MONA M03’s sales had already fallen to 6,718 units and 4,373 units respectively. One important reason is that consumers are holding cash and waiting for the facelift.

The large-deposit data breaking 10,000 in 37 minutes is certainly impressive, but some portion of the previously accumulated, cautious demand is also being released in concentrated fashion.

However, the competitive landscape in the 100k to 150k yuan pure-electric family sedan market is changing rapidly. New models such as Dongfeng Nissan N7 and Leapmotor B01 have entered the arena one after another.

With intelligent features accelerating down the value chain, over-600-kilometer range is gradually becoming standard. Whether the 2026 MONA M03 can continue the earlier record of being the segment sales champion for 18 consecutive months remains to be validated over time.

02 Don’t just be a car company

This MONA M03 facelift addresses the immediate sales problem. But a week earlier, the company’s renaming pointed to something longer-term.

On March 27, Xpeng announced in Hong Kong that, effective April 1, 2026, the company’s Chinese name will change from “Xpeng Motors Co., Ltd.” to “Xpeng Group.” The English name will remain “XPeng Inc.” Hong Kong-listed share trading abbreviation will also be changed from “Xpeng Motors–W” to “Xpeng Group–W.”

Dropping the two characters “Motors” implies the company no longer wants to be viewed only as a car company.

He Xiaopeng also responded to Wallstreet Journal Insight about the background and rationale behind the renaming.

He explained that for the past decade it has been called “Xpeng Motors” because it initially focused on intelligent electric vehicles, but a new decade has already begun. In the new era, new energy vehicles need to layer AI on top, turning into an “AI + new energy vehicle” combination.

“I believe that in the new decade, people will see tremendous change,” He Xiaopeng said. “If two or three years ago I still thought the robot transformation was something for the next decade, but over the past year, I’ve seen changes in physical AI foundation models. Honestly, my reaction was extremely surprising.”

He predicts that the robot era is accelerating significantly. Previously he believed that fully autonomous driving at L5 level would be impossible even within ten years. But now he thinks it’s “really possible to achieve it soon,” and that the robot era may even come faster than autonomous driving, because robots face less stringent safety requirements than cars.

Based on this judgment, Xpeng Group’s business footprint is no longer limited to automobiles.

He Xiaopeng disclosed that the company is positioning cars as a base business and, on top of that, extending into multiple directions including flying cars, humanoid robots, AI chips, and autonomous-driving model development. In fact, as early as last November’s Xpeng Technology Day, He Xiaopeng had redefined the company’s core positioning: a mobility explorer in the physical AI world, and a globally oriented embodied intelligence company.

Since this year began, the organizational structure has been adjusted. The autonomous driving center and intelligent cockpit center have been merged to establish a general intelligent center, integrating AI capabilities and sharing a unified physical AI foundation model.

According to the plan, Xpeng’s four key physical AI application initiatives—the second-generation VLA, Robotaxi, humanoid robots, and flying cars—are all planned to move into mass production in 2026.

In March, Xpeng already announced the establishment of a standalone Robotaxi business unit, planning to launch three all-stack, self-developed mass-production Robotaxi models in 2026. The end-to-end mass production base for humanoid robots has also started construction, with a year-end target monthly production capacity of over one thousand units.

But behind the grand narrative, an unavoidable real issue is being pushed to the forefront: while continuing heavy investment in AI, how does Xpeng balance its finances?

According to public information, in 2026, Xpeng plans to spend 7 billion yuan on R&D in AI alone. And in 2025, although Xpeng’s net loss narrowed to 1.14 billion yuan, it is still far from stable profitability.

He Xiaopeng’s stance is clear: “Why be so committed to investing? We believe change will come very quickly… I’m extremely firm that after technology undergoes dramatic changes, it becomes extremely effective.” Not participating in price wars and continuing to build long-term advantages in intelligent driving—this is the differentiated path Xpeng has chosen. The higher gross margin level of the new MONA M03 also provides backing for this strategy.

However, the market’s patience regarding profitability is getting increasingly limited. Balancing strategic expansion with financial soundness is something Xpeng will have to keep answering.

He Xiaopeng believes that this is a brand-new starting point for Xpeng. What needs to be seen next is not only whether MONA M03 orders can convert into deliveries, and whether the momentum can be sustained, but also the AI card—how Xpeng plays it, when it comes out, and whether it can deliver results that match the level of investment.

The following are edited excerpts from a conversation involving Wallstreet Journal Insight and He Xiaopeng, Chairman and CEO of Xpeng Group, and Yang Guang, MONA product lead of Xpeng Group (edited without affecting the original meaning):

Q: What are your thoughts on the profit model in the new year?

**He Xiaopeng: **I think since last year, roughly the past 4 to 5 years, has been the most critical turning period for the Chinese auto industry. Scale is important. But scale is not absolute—there are many forms of scale value that aren’t that meaningful. From an internet perspective before, high-quality scale is the most valuable. But for a company to grow from small to large, it may need scale first in order to be high-quality. Yet some companies go straight for high quality from the start.

Since last year, people have been able to see that Xpeng’s quarterly profitability is improving. For the full year there wasn’t profit, but the loss for the full year was only very small. Last year our R&D expenses were about 119.8k yuan. If you add flying cars, it would be more than 151.8k yuan. This year our R&D spending has increased by a larger amount. So from another angle, if you don’t count our investment in completely new R&D—including chips, next-generation AI, and robotics, and also some new things we can’t tell everyone yet—we are already operating at a fairly large scale profitable in the auto business, and even this year we can achieve it.

But why do I say these 4 to 5 years—because we see that technology will bring about massive transformation. Honestly, in the past I wasn’t sure about AI’s impact on the physical world—its depth, its pace, and its timing. But since the second quarter last year, I became clearer and clearer about it. Moreover, this change runs from the entire organizational paradigm, to the R&D paradigm, and ultimately to the end experience and outcomes. I think that what everyone will see this year—our second-generation VLA—is still basically the first step of VLA. The market results of Xpeng’s R&D investment—then I believe every quarter after that will show tremendous, rapid changes.

In the past, software was linear—it was painful. Today, if it improves by 5%, next quarter it might only still improve by 5%. But AI is not linear. For Xpeng this year and for Xpeng in the coming years, I’m very confident. You can see that starting in April, MONA represents the first product of a brand-new second quarter. Xpeng is not only at a turning point from scale to high-quality development, but in the course of this year you’ll also see how we better balance scale, quality, profit, globalization, and the broader ecosystem—starting from a much better place.

Q: Why rename to Xpeng Group? What are your expectations for the competitive landscape?

**He Xiaopeng: **Over the 10 years since we started Xpeng, at the beginning we focused on intelligent electric vehicles, so Xpeng’s most core business is automobiles. I think this decade will shift people from the previous 10 years of new energy vehicles into a new 10 years of new energy vehicles combined with an intelligent-agent layer + new energy vehicles.

In the new decade, many people will see the transformation of robots. If two or three years ago I still thought the robot transformation was the next decade—the third decade—then over the past year I’ve seen changes in physical AI foundation models, which honestly made me extremely surprised. So from another angle, I think the robot era will arrive faster. Previously I thought L5 within ten years was impossible. Now I think L5 really could be achieved within a decade, and robots are even more likely because robots have less demanding requirements than L5.

By revising the name from “Xpeng Motors” to “Xpeng Group,” we are looking at the new global physical AI era, where within physical AI, robots and cars enter China and then enter the global market. That is a very important new decade. I believe that most automakers today don’t have a good business model; they operate in a very involutionary (highly competitive, self-defeating) mode.

Everyone pursues high-quality development and doesn’t want involution, but the essence of cars is that in the hardware portion it’s not a particularly good commercial model. That’s the fact I’ve observed in recent years. So how a new auto company can, in the future, become a technology company—how to become a different kind of company—we’re doing a lot of rethinking and re-planning. When people see “Xpeng Motors” change to “Xpeng Group,” that is exactly the layout we are executing here.

There will certainly be challenges in the domestic market, but I think it’s actually an opportunity for high-quality development. The overseas market is a huge opportunity. We see competitors developing very well in overseas markets. Among the new-automaker forces, in the past 5 years plus this year’s layout, Xpeng has built a strong foundation for Xpeng’s globalization in the second half of this year and next year. And we also hope that next year, we won’t just take cars global—we’ll also take other product lines global.

I’ve always believed that in the end it’s a flowering of many kinds, a process where high-quality development prevails and the weak are eliminated. In the end it will be very difficult for so many companies to remain. A few years ago I often said that by 2030 China might only have five China-focused automakers left. I’m still very firm in this belief. I think there is a certain scale threshold, but it’s far from the necessary condition for a win.

Q: Why add the new Ultra SE version?

**Yang Guang: **When our project team was working on this last year, we thought the MAX version was already very good and the value for money was already quite high. The SE version’s chips are more expensive this year—so should we not make it? Until one day, Tingting brought me a test-drive car from a certain company to try it out for me and Lao Jiang in that little alley area. After we tested it, Lao Jiang hurried to report to Xpeng and said: add the SE. I think this is a typical example of how a major technological iteration can lead to a huge shift in users’ understanding and product perception.

Q: Where does your confidence come from for pure-electric markets under 150k yuan? Do you have any plans to expand overseas?

**Yang Guang: **This is not about a 150k-yuan-class market being fiercely competitive—competition in each tier of the China auto market is very intense. There are roughly 180 to 190 new models every year. If you include facelifts and annual updates, it’s close to 1,200 to 1,300 models. If M03 is able to achieve results, it must have some unique strengths.

Overseas, younger users also like more youth-oriented cars. Young users around the world, in general, like cars that look good, are smart, are trendy, cutting-edge, and that truly understand their product. So we’re very confident that if MONA goes overseas, younger users overseas will also like it. As for the overseas expansion plan, we’ll sync that with everyone later.

Q: Are the main competitors for the M03 the Model 3? How do you win over younger audiences?

**Yang Guang: **The M03 is a very special product. Its overall product form is highly differentiated within this price segment. Its user base is very typical “better-equivalent” type users. A lot of young users like having something really good, because when they’ve just entered society their economic conditions are limited.

But being young doesn’t mean they necessarily have to use something bad. So we provide them, through differentiation, with a very good, high-quality, youth-oriented product. Of course, these users also look at Model 3. Everyone knows Tesla is an outstanding benchmark in the industry. So is there competition with it? Definitely yes—it’s also one of our competitors. But more than that, we provide users with different services through different products and different images at different price tiers.

Q: Why change the cockpit chip? Is there a plan for the chip to be listed independently?

**He Xiaopeng: **Xpeng is currently using chips from both MTK and Qualcomm for the cockpit. Those chips have been doing very well in the phone space, so we can combine them across different models and obtain very strong capabilities. My view on cockpit chips may not be exactly the same as many other companies’ views.

Personally, I think as intelligent assisted driving becomes stronger, the car’s screens will increasingly shift from a click-based interaction style to a primarily “playback” style. The dashboard’s functional importance will keep decreasing. Cars will become more about compute capability rather than CPU or GPU. It’s likely to be mainly an NPU-based logic. So we’ll see that intelligent assisted driving will change the car.

Second, after the Ultra full-power version functions roll out in the second half of this year, people will see new capabilities in the cockpit. At that point, you’ll see some changes in our thinking about chip positioning. There’s no information I can share yet. But I still believe that in the future, strong AI companies must develop their own chips—this is absolutely unchanging. I’m extremely, extremely firm about that.

Q: Will the MONA series introduce SUVs, wagons, and other models?

**He Xiaopeng: **The MONA lineup will definitely have more cars beyond the M03, and it will definitely go from China to the global market. That’s what we can share right now.

Q: How do you balance AI R&D investment with output? How has the gross margin of the new models changed?

**He Xiaopeng: **I looked at last year’s trend charts showing how many automakers’ absolute R&D spending values changed, and how the ratios of their spending changed. I think Xpeng has gone through a process of higher income, but also a higher relative proportion of R&D investment. I think in most eras of the auto industry, this is not right. But today I’m very firmly convinced that when technology is changing dramatically, it is extremely effective. Our commercialization capabilities will show up quickly. That’s also why I said that if you don’t count other innovative businesses, Xpeng’s auto business last year and this year already felt like it had very good profit.

But why are we so committed to investing? We believe change will arrive quickly. So today, simply having the scale in the auto business isn’t enough. Your second question also reflects that the profit of the 2026 Xpeng MONA is much better than the 2025 MONA. It reflects a very important capability of Xpeng: the cars are getting better and better. We pursue higher and higher gross margins, and we are increasingly convinced that Xpeng will be a technology company, not just an auto company. I believe that making cheap, low-profit cars has no value. So you’ll see that in the auto segment, Xpeng won’t make cars under 100k yuan RMB. We have the scale, but we believe the value is too small.

Q: How do you view the industry’s statements about the number of automakers and the new vs. old forces?

**He Xiaopeng: **I said two or three years ago that I think around 2030 China will have only five scaled, China-focused automakers still alive. Others will be small in scale or find it hard to survive long-term. At that time, many people didn’t believe it. Because in the past, there wasn’t this kind of problem in the auto industry—there were always 100 or 200 companies, and everyone could “eat.”

I think high computing power—if you put it simply—means that in the future, all cars will be high-level automated assisted driving. And even when the technology and regulations are OK, they will become driverless cars. I think it’s an inevitable process. In the past software era, it was relatively difficult to reach that level. But in the AI era, I think it’s not far away.

Q: Will the annual sales target be adjusted? Are there plans for new features related to the car machine?

**He Xiaopeng: **We never make plans for our annual results. If people speculate, they’re definitely wrong—we won’t lower anything. We’ll only do better than what everyone guesses. Why did I say it as early as January this year? Because I want everyone to believe that our opportunities across Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4—our chances in every quarter—and next year will keep climbing.

Based on many capabilities. Including today’s MONA M03 launch. I think MONA is a car with very strong product power and a comprehensive product power. I think product is the 1; everything else is 0. If the product can’t stand on its own, there’s no way. At least from our perspective, we can gradually see the turning points in comprehensive product power across multiple products.

Q: How will the auto market’s price trend look this year? What advice do you have for consumers?

**He Xiaopeng: **My own feeling is that since last year’s second quarter, after 17 automakers jointly chased high-quality development, the possibility of that kind of disorderly involution should basically be zero now. Everyone is pursuing higher-quality development. And I especially want to say: if auto companies only compete in a disorderly involution within the physical world, they ultimately won’t survive—only a question of when they get hung up, whether it’s early or late.

You can see that over the past year and a bit, we’ve been pursuing how to deliver high attractiveness, high quality, high intelligence, and then form a combination that creates high value for both customers and the company. We’re going very steadily—not like before, when changes in the environment caused rapid changes. So I believe at least in this year, the situation you mentioned won’t occur. But in the next few years, as the whole AI era crushes the old auto era, I think the market will definitely experience a painful adjustment. Especially for traditional automakers, there may be huge changes. At that time, there may be many new things.

Q: Why not simplify the model lineup and intelligent driving version SKUs?

**He Xiaopeng: **Cars are a very long-line marathon in a very large-scale industry. It’s not like many small-scale traditional manufacturing where once you reach a certain scale, competitors have no need to come in. That’s not how this business model works. So it’s both a hardware business, and it’s not just a typical traditional hardware business. So I still believe that in this field, across the global majority of automakers, it’s difficult to succeed with just two or three models.

If 10 years from now—because in the past, in my view, software accounts for maybe 10% of Power or Value, but in the next 3 to 5 years, software may account for half, and maybe 3 to 5 years after that software could account for as much as 70%. The higher the software share is, remember that changes in hardware going from many diversified forms to just a few will be even more dramatic. But today, the global market is changing very quickly. In different places, in different scenarios, with different technologies, hardware, software, data, and scenarios, we need different data capabilities. Our product people making cars need a broader and longer-term perspective, not just looking at one thing.

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