On February 11, Xiaopeng Automobile, a new domestic car-making force, announced its official entry into the European market.
They plan to open their first self-operated store outside of China in Stockholm, Sweden, this week. At the same time, Xiaopeng Motors also signed a car sales agreement with Billia, a large local car dealer and distributor in Sweden. Xiaopeng's electric vehicles will be exhibited and serviced at Bilia's stores.
In addition, Xiaopeng Motors has also signed a distribution agreement with Dutch auto retailer Emil Frey, and it is expected that Xiaopeng Motors' store in The Hague, the Netherlands, will open in March 2022.
Plans to open stores in Sweden and then the Netherlands indicate that Xiaopeng Motors is accelerating its expansion in the international market.
Xiaopeng Motors plans to generate 50% of its car sales from overseas markets in the future.
In fact, Xiaopeng Automobile had received orders from the European market as early as September 2020. At that time, 100 Xiaopeng G3i cars were loaded from Guangzhou to Norway, and the unit price of these cars was starting at NOK 358,000 (about 256,000 yuan).
Xiaopeng Motors will sell cars to Europe in 2020
In February 2021, Xiaopeng Motors announced that the second batch of 209 Xiaopeng G3 cars has set sail from Guangzhou Xinsha Port for export to Norway.
After more than a year of testing the waters in the market, Xiaopeng Automobile finally decided to set up a store in Europe.
At present, many new domestic car-making forces have entered the European market, including Weilai Automobile and Ideal Automobile.
In November 2020, some media broke the news that WEILAI Automobile had formulated a strategy called "Marco Polo Plan" in order to set up a business unit to sell its models to the European market. At that time, there were rumors that NIO's first overseas NIO House would land in Copenhagen, Denmark.
But in fact, NIO's first overseas store in May 2021 is located in Oslo, the capital of Norway, and founder Li Bin also explained that norway as the first destination to go to sea is for long-term considerations. Because Norway is the most friendly country for electric vehicles and the largest market for electric vehicles in Europe.
Although Xiaopeng Motors sold the car to Norway in the early stage, they finally chose to open stores in Sweden and the Netherlands, for two reasons, on the one hand, they wanted to avoid direct competition with Weilai, and on the other hand, because the electric vehicle market in Sweden and the Netherlands grew well.
Ideal Car, a new car-making company, also revealed in May 2021 that they have established a team responsible for overseas markets and are studying issues such as channels for overseas markets. Ideal Cars in the future is also likely to set up stores in Europe.
The reason why Europe's electric vehicle market has been valued by the new forces of Chinese car manufacturing is because in 2020, the global automobile market has fallen by 14% due to the impact of the epidemic, but the sales of new energy vehicles in Europe have increased by 142% year-on-year against the trend, which has also made Europe the world's largest new energy sales market alongside China.
Another August 2021 report by the International Energy Agency pointed out that the Chinese market accounts for 44% of the total global electric vehicle market, about 31% in Europe and only 17% in the United States. But from 2016 to 2020, the compound annual growth rate of electric vehicle sales in these three regions is the highest in Europe, at 60%, followed by China at 36%, and the United States at only 17%.
Nowadays, the new car-making companies have gradually gained a foothold in the Chinese market, and accelerating the opening up of the "European battlefield" in the future will be their important strategy.