There's a new metric for EV success

Did you know that Xiaomi is not the only Chinese car brand that can sell thousands of cars in minutes? Xpeng can be added to that list as of today. According to CarNewsChina the Xpeng P7 sold 10.000 units in just 6:37 minutes.

I'm not quite sure if that makes the refreshed model a success or a failure. To be completely fair, 10.000 cars in less than 7 minutes doesn't sound that impressive if you compare it to competitor Xiaomi. Within three minutes after the introduction, 200.000 Chinese people had jumped online to preorder their very own version. Xiaomi didn't do that once, it did it twice. The same numbers came up when they introduced the Ferrari Purosangue, eh, YU7. 

It seems like large amounts of preorders are being seen as a new metric for the potential success of EV's. The bigger the number, the better the car. At least for the Chinese market, which is regarded as the most difficult to penetrate for brands at this point in time.

That last part is something Polestar and Porsche have to deal with. The first is all but leaving the country after it only managed to sell 69 units in the first half of this year. Also Porsche has seen its sales decline by almost a third in China, while owner Volkswagen has said it's pretty much pointless to try and gain marketshare in the country.

(Keep in mind both mentioned brands are doing really well in other countries. Polestar selling hundreds of thousands of units in the EU and Porsche's sales increased 10 percent in the US in H1, even with the added tariffs.)

So what are we measuring here? What do these numbers actually mean? Not really all that much, since we're only counting pre-orders. That does not mean people are going through with actually buying the car when their build slot comes op to be filled and -more importantly- it's time to pay the full amount. 

Just to point out the insanely low bar Xpeng is putting up for customers here: "Consumers can place an order by paying a 99 yuan (14 USD) deposit, which can later be used to offset a 3000 yuan (418 USD) purchase price", according to CNC. Those prices are so low, they almost look like a typo.

A great example for the worthlessness of preorders is the Cybertruck. At one point almost two million people were rumored to have paid Tesla for the ability to buy one of the stainless steel pickups. Those numbers turned out to be exaggerated by about 96 percent. Tesla has only sold about 40.000 Cybertrucks since it started production and is already finding it hard to sell the damned thing. 

We also have to put the Chinese numbers into perspective. China is the world's largest car market with about 31 mllion cars sold in 2024. That's about twice as much as the US and about 100 times more than The Netherlands (my homecountry). 200.000 units is a lot, but not that much in the grand scheme of things. 10.000 is even less. Most models sell way more than that in their first year after introduction. 

You also have to keep in mind that the Chinese EV-market is really a lot further than we are in Europe or the US. The fresh disdain to everything that doesn't roar when you start it up and burns flammable liquids isn't as big there as it is over here.

So it seems like we have another vanity metric on our hands. One that can be easily manipulated by extremely low pricing. But it grabs headlines, and that in turn gets attention, which means more eyeballs and maybe more sales. It's a bit of a marketing gimmick.

In other news

Succes for Tesla: the US military is buying two Cybertrucks. Not for actual use by soldiers, that would be stupid. They're going to use them as targets for missiles. They're buying them to blow them up. That'll teach Mr Musk who's finally getting rid of the remaining and less than unsuccessful electric pickups nobody seems to want anymore. Maybe it's a weird gesture of good will from the big Orange blob in The White House?

Looking for a second house? BMW might be building an interesting one: a new X7 is coming up. Motor1 took it upon itself to create some renders of the new shed on wheels so you can tour your next living room on wheels well before it's being released to te public.

Shit seems to be hitting the fan over at Lotus. The European boss has left after just four months. Why? Reportedly because he and other managers that already left were asked to make plans to leave the UK right after Geely had told people it wasn't planning on leaving the country because the government promised to subsidize production on UK soil.