The order books for the second-generation Xpeng P7 are now open in China, a few months after the brand’s new flagship sedan was revealed in May this year. Response to the new P7 has been encouraging, as Xpeng announced on its Weibo page that over 10,000 bookings were received in just six minutes and 37 seconds. At the moment, customers can place an order by paying a deposit of 99 yuan (about RM58), which can later be used to offset a 3,000 yuan purchase price (RM1.8k). Full pricing will only be announced later this month when the electric vehicle (EV) is officially launched. The same goes with specifications, although the Chinese company has provided some preliminary details. To start, the P7 is built on an 800-volt electrical architecture and can be had with rear- or all-wheel drive. RWD variants come with an electric motor rated at 367 PS (362 hp or 270 kW) that is paired with either a 74.9-kWh lithium iron phosphate (LFP) or 92.2-kWh nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) battery. Meanwhile, the AWD only gets the NCM battery and gains another electric motor on the front axle with 227 PS (224 hp or 167 kW) for a total system output of 594 PS (586 hp or 437 kW). This version is claimed to have a top speed of 230 km/h and a 0-100 km/h time of 3.7 seconds. All battery packs support 5C fast charging, with up to 525 km of range recoverable with just 10 minutes of being plugged in. Xpeng touts three range figures – 702 km, 750 km and 820 km – all of which are based on China’s generous CLTC standard. The P7 is a large car, measuring in at 5,017 mm long, 1,970 wide, 1,427 mm tall and with a wheelbase of 3,008 mm. Xpeng says the sedan’s sleek shape and over 25 wind optimisation design elements help it to achieve a low drag coefficient of just 0.201. For context, the Mercedes-Benz EQS has a drag coefficient of 0.202. As for styling, the P7 adopts the brand’s Xmart Face that sees light strips form an expressive (and reactive) H-shaped signature at the front, with the effect replicated at the rear as well. Active front shutters, flush door handles, a retractable rear wing and 20-inch aero wheels are other notable items, the last of which can be swapped for sports wheels or larger 21-inch forged units. Our first look at the P7’s interior reveals a minimalistic dashboard that is dominated by a 15.6-inch infotainment touchscreen. You won’t find any physical controls on the dash, which means the central display is how you’ll go about accessing vehicle functions. Most EVs follow this path, but Xpeng is taking a page out of BYD’s playbook by making the screen more interesting by enabling it to swing left and right, as well as up and down, with up to 25 degrees of motion. Elsewhere, the three-spoke steering wheel comes with dials that can adjust driving assistance systems, air suspension settings and drive modes, along with enabling a boost mode. There’s also an 87-inch head-up display with augmented reality, a rear 8-inch entertainment screen behind the centre console, rear seats with backrests that have 30 degrees of motion, a glass roof and a 23-speaker sound system. Powering the intelligent cabin with VLM (Vision Language Model) is one of three in-house developing Turing AI chips providing 2,250 TOPS. The remaining two serve to enable the assisted driving features that are improved with what the company calls VLA-OL (Vision Language Action with online reinforcement learning capabilities).
