Tesla unveiled its new Mannequin Y with a refreshed design in China and lots of identified that it seems to be remarkably just like Xpeng’s P7, which is humorous as a result of Xpeng itself was a Tesla copycat at its inception.
It goes full circle.
Henry Xia, who based Xpeng in 2014, admitted overtly that he was influenced by Tesla and by the automaker’s announcement that they have been open-sourcing their patents.
It was reportedly the primary firm to truly take up Tesla on utilizing their patents at no cost.
However issues took a flip for the more serious from there.
Xpeng went past simply taking inspiration from Tesla and its considerably open patents. It copied Tesla’s Autopilot and cluster consumer interface:
Tesla later additionally initiated a lawsuit towards Guangzhi Cao, a former Autopilot engineer who give up to affix Xpeng’s autonomous driving staff. The automaker accused the engineer of stealing Tesla’s Autopilot supply code for Xpeng.
The lawsuit was settled in 2021. Xpeng was not the celebration to the lawsuit and acknowledged that its personal driver-assist options relied on in-house growth.
However Xpeng didn’t cease copying Tesla there. The Chinese language firm blatantly copied Tesla’s web site for a short second in 2020:
Now, a couple of years later, you would argue that it’s going the opposite approach round.
Yesterday, Tesla unveiled its Mannequin Y design refresh in China with the most important change being a front-end redesign that’s remarkably just like Xpeng’s P7+ and different automobiles within the Chinese language EV automaker’s lineup.
It options the identical 3-section lightbar and really related headlights popping out of the aspect air intakes:
Xpeng senior designer Rafik Ferrag additionally observed the resemblance, and in a brand new submit on Instagram at the moment, he stated that he believes Tesla is “paying tribute” to Xpeng’s design with the brand new Mannequin Y refresh:
In 2019, Xiaopeng P7 introduced a pattern of entrance cross-over lamp to your entire trade. In truth, this set of options was designed by us in 2018 and has been used as Xiaopeng’s DNA and id since then. It’s nonetheless being paid tribute to by varied producers resembling Tesla and LX.
Proper earlier than Tesla’s unveiling of the brand new Mannequin Y, Xpeng shared the primary official photos of its new G7 SUV, which contains a related front-end:
Xpeng has seen its automobile deliveries surge 34% in 2024 in comparison with Tesla’s deliveries being down 1%. The G7 can also be positioned to be certainly one of Tesla’s prime Mannequin Y competitor in China, which is its most necessary market.
Electrek’s Take
It at all times goes full circle. There’s little doubt in thoughts that Xpeng copied Tesla prior to now and whereas I can’t affirm that Tesla copied Xpeng right here, it appears extraordinarily prone to me.
Xpeng has been doing very effectively with its lineup in China this yr and now the G7 is severe competitors to Tesla’s fundamental cash maker: promoting Mannequin Y automobiles in China.
Is Tesla getting nervous?
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