Finance

Xpeng releases mass-market EV with basic driver-assist for less than $20,000

Published

8 months ago

August 27, 2024

Chinese electric car company Xpeng displays its mass-market Mona M03 coupe inside a headquarters’ showroom in Guangzhou, China, on Aug. 26, 2024.

CNBC | Evelyn Cheng

BEIJING — Chinese electric car company Xpeng on Tuesday announced that its mass-market brand Mona will start selling some models for less than $17,000.

The basic version of the Mona M03 electric coupe will be listed at 119,800 yuan ($16,812), with a driving range of 515 kilometers (320 miles) and some parking assist features.

A version of the Mona M03 with the more advanced “Max” driver assist features and a driving range of 580 kilometers will sell for 155,800 yuan.

In comparison, Tesla’s cheapest car — the Model 3 — costs 231,900 yuan in China, after a price cut in April.

Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng did not specify a launch date for the standard version of the car in his presentation on Tuesday. The company told investors last week on an earnings call that mass deliveries would begin shortly after Tuesday’s announcement.

Presales of the Mona M03 began on Aug. 8.

XPeng earnings: 'Still a good result to have for the quarter,' KraneShares says

The Mona M03 standard driver-assist supports parking, including parallel parking. The company says it uses a range of automatic sensors, cameras and light detection and ranging sensors.

The Max version of driver assist includes features such as automatically backing up a car to a designated position in a dead-end street with the push of a button. Xpeng also plans for it to support the remote control of entering and exiting a narrow parking spot.

That Max version is set to begin deliveries after the Lunar New Year holiday in 2025, CEO He said. The Chinese holiday runs from late January to early February next year.

Xpeng’s driver-assist technology is widely considered one of the best currently available in China. Tesla‘s version, marketed as “full self-driving,” isn’t fully accessible in China, although it is widely expected to be released in the coming months.

The Xpeng CEO’s presentation on Tuesday also commemorated the 10th anniversary of Xpeng’s founding. Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi’s founder Lei Jun was among those in attendance

CEO He said the brand name Mona stands for “Made of new AI.” He emphasized that over the next decade, Xpeng would focus on developing artificial intelligence for cars.

The company also said Tuesday that it plans to reveal its second-generation humanoid robot in October. It also revealed its own chip, but did not specify what nanometer process — or level of production technology — is used in its manufacturing.

Premium Chinese electric car startup Nio in late July said it had finished designing a five nanometer automotive-grade chip, the NX9031. The company had teased the chip in December, and plans to use it in its high-end ET9 sedan, set for delivery in 2025.

Collaboration with Didi

Xpeng built Mona using tech it acquired from ride-hailing company Didi in August 2023.

Wu Zhefeng, a Mona project manager, told reporters Monday that the basic version of driver-assist technology in the M03 comes from Didi, while the more advanced version was made by Xpeng.

Since the battery is the priciest component of an electric car, he said Xpeng was able to bring the cost down for Mona thanks in part to efforts to boost energy efficiency. The coupe uses BYD‘s popular “blade battery,” Wu said.

He said the brand is focused on young people, two or three years after graduation.

Nearly half of similar cars available in China within this price range are used for ride-hailing, according to Wu. While electric car companies such as BYD have worked with Didi to promote their cars among drivers on the ride-hailing platform, he said Mona would remain focused on consumer drivers.

BYD, which has quickly become a giant in China’s electric car industry, sells cars across a range of prices and models, including many hybrid-powered versions. Consumers in China have increasingly preferred hybrids to battery-only cars as anxiety persists over how far they can drive on a single charge.

Geely-owned electric car company Zeekr announced earlier this month that it would launch its first hybrid car next year.

Other Chinese companies have launched cars this year in direct competition with Tesla.

Nio, which has focused on premium electric cars, in May announced a lower-priced brand Onvo. Its first car, the L60 SUV, is set to begin deliveries in September. The L60 starts at 219,900 yuan (US$30,439) versus the Model Y’s 249,900 yuan (US$34,617), according to prices shared in May.

Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi, meanwhile, in March released its first electric car, the SU7 sedan for 215,900 yuan.

— CNBC’s Sonia Heng contributed to this report.

Finance

More Americans buy groceries with buy now, pay later loans

Published

4 hours ago

April 26, 2025

Business Finance News

People shop for produce at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025.

Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images

A growing number of Americans are using buy now, pay later loans to buy groceries, and more people are paying those bills late, according to new Lending Tree data released Friday.

The figures are the latest indicator that some consumers are cracking under the pressure of an uncertain economy and are having trouble affording essentials such as groceries as they contend with persistent inflation, high interest rates and concerns around tariffs.

In a survey conducted April 2-3 of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 79, around half reported having used buy now, pay later services. Of those consumers, 25% of respondents said they were using BNPL loans to buy groceries, up from 14% in 2024 and 21% in 2023, the firm said.

Meanwhile, 41% of respondents said they made a late payment on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 34% in the year prior, the survey found.

Lending Tree’s chief consumer finance analyst, Matt Schulz, said that of those respondents who said they paid a BNPL bill late, most said it was by no more than a week or so.

“A lot of people are struggling and looking for ways to extend their budget,” Schulz said. “Inflation is still a problem. Interest rates are still really high. There’s a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and other economic issues, and it’s all going to add up to a lot of people looking for ways to extend their budget however they can.”

“For an awful lot of people, that’s going to mean leaning on buy now, pay later loans, for better or for worse,” he said.

He stopped short of calling the results a recession indicator but said conditions are expected to decline further before they get better.

“I do think it’s going to get worse, at least in the short term,” said Schulz. “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of reason to expect these numbers to get better in the near term.”

The loans, which allow consumers to split up purchases into several smaller payments, are a popular alternative to credit cards because they often don’t charge interest. But consumers can see high fees if they pay late, and they can run into problems if they stack up multiple loans. In Lending Tree’s survey, 60% of BNPL users said they’ve had multiple loans at once, with nearly a fourth saying they have held three or more at once.

“It’s just really important for people to be cautious when they use these things, because even though they can be a really good interest-free tool to help you kind of make it from one paycheck to the next, there’s also a lot of risk in mismanaging it,” said Schulz. “So people should tread lightly.”

Lending Tree’s findings come after Billboard revealed that about 60% of general admission Coachella attendees funded their concert tickets with buy now, pay later loans, sparking a debate on the state of the economy and how consumers are using debt to keep up their lifestyles. A recent announcement from DoorDash that it would begin accepting BNPL financing from Klarna for food deliveries led to widespread mockery and jokes that Americans were struggling so much that they were now being forced to finance cheeseburgers and burritos.

Over the last few years, consumers have held up relatively well, even in the face of persistent inflation and high interest rates, because the job market was strong and wage growth had kept up with inflation — at least for some workers.

Earlier this year, however, large companies including Walmart and Delta Airlines began warning that the dynamic had begun to shift and they were seeing cracks in demand, which was leading to worse-than-expected sales forecasts.