After similar moves by Tesla and Seres and fuelling expectations of a wider price war, Chinese automaker Xpeng has announced price cuts for some models in a notice on its official WeChat account.
The notice said that Xpeng lowered the starting prices for its best-selling pure electric P 7 sedan to 209,900 yuan $31,015, which is 12.5 per cent less than its previous level.
The Guangdong-based automaker has slashed prices for all versions of the P 5 sedan and G 3 i sports utility vehicles by between 10 per cent and 13 per cent, according to the prices.
Competition is intensifying in the electric vehicle EV sector in China, despite forecasts that demand will falter in the first quarter. EV makers are under pressure to cut prices to support sales volumes because of the fact that many of them are still loss-making.
A Xpeng spokesman told Reuters in a statement that they wanted to make intelligent vehicles more accessible to more people with more competitive prices.
Xpeng said it would offer car owners who purchased automobiles before the price cut extended maintenance services for free as compensation.
In China earlier this month, Tesla slashed prices of its Model 3 and Model Y cars by 6 per cent to 13.5 per cent, while Seres cut prices for its Aito electric cars it co-developed with Huawei Technologies Co by 30,000 yuan last Friday.
Xpeng is expecting a revamped version of the three-year old P 7 sedan to be launched in the first quarter to boost sales. In 2022, the EV maker sold 59,066 P 7 cars, which are 2.5 per cent less than a year earlier.