I have driven several electric cars in recent years, and only twice have I been able to reach the manufacturer’s claimed range when giving the battery a full charge. It happened with Hyundai’s Ioniq 9 last year, and last week the revised Xpeng G6 also lived up to its claimed range of 470km when fully charged.
We have all heard jokes about people putting on weight while waiting for their EV to charge. It’s tempting to have a tea or coffee and a fancy cake if you have to stop at a roadside filling station to charge your electric car. But last week I did a few short walks while waiting for my Xpeng to charge at SuperValu in Walkinstown. So instead of putting on weight while waiting to charge, you can also lose weight.
I was very impressed with the Xpeng, which along with BYD and Smart are the Chinese brands currently being imported by the MDL group.
It’s massive car and my daughter, who is my regular travelling companion, kept commenting on how spacious the interior was. She is very colour conscious and was impressed with the lovely touches of light grey on the seats and dash area. A full-length sunroof adds to the bright interior feel. Overall, the interior has a minimalistic and clean look to it.
Plenty of room in the back seat for three well-built adults and with a flat floor no complaints from the person sitting in the middle. The boot is a decent size at 571 litres, rising to 1,374 litres with the rear seats folded down.
Most of the controls are incorporated into the massive 15.6-inch screen on the dash. From that screen you can find everything you need to know about driving the car, how to open the bonnet, the boot, the electric charge point, and the glove box.
I read recently that that in Europe, at least, there are plans to bring back a few old-style buttons for air conditioning and radio. That would definitely be a sensible idea as it’s very dangerous for the driver to take their eyes off for the road for just a few seconds to find something on that huge screen. I think most of us have trained our bodies to find buttons on the dash without fumbling to find them.
The Xpeng is similar in looks to a few other electric cars currently available, most notably Tesla’s Model Y, some of Kia’s new EV range and the Skoda Enyaq. My test car came in Arctic White, which is similar to a shade of white that Tesla use.
As usual you get two vanity mirrors in the front for driver and front seat passenger. But I noticed that in order to see the vanity mirrors you need to fold down a piece of material that covers the mirrors.
Prices for the RWD Standard Range version that I drove have been held at €42,000, as has the price of the long-range version at €49,440. The range in the latter version is 525km. Naturally, like all electric cars, it takes off like a greyhound, and the max speed is 202km, if it’s penalty points you are after!
I really enjoyed my time in the Xpeng, and it charges really fast, so fast you can only take a short walk.
I got a lot of people asking me about the name and how is it’s pronounced. We don’t have many words in the English language starting with ‘X’ apart from X-Ray and Xylophone. The name Xpeng reminded me of an old television ad in the eighties promoting a product for cows called Cheno Unction. The manufacturer’s advertising line was: “It’s a quare name, but great stuff.”
