Tesla unveiled its new Mannequin Y with a refreshed design in China and lots of identified that it seems to be remarkably much 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 really take up Tesla on utilizing their patents at no cost.
However issues took a flip for the more severe from there.
Xpeng went past simply taking inspiration from Tesla and its considerably open patents. It copied Tesla’s Autopilot and cluster person interface:
Tesla later additionally initiated a lawsuit in opposition to Guangzhi Cao, a former Autopilot engineer who stop to affix Xpeng’s autonomous driving workforce. 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 improvement.
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 possibly can argue that it’s going the opposite means round.
Yesterday, Tesla unveiled its Mannequin Y design refresh in China with the most important change being a front-end redesign that’s remarkably much like Xpeng’s P7+ and different autos within the Chinese language EV automaker’s lineup.
It options the identical 3-section lightbar and really related headlights popping out of the facet air intakes:
Xpeng senior designer Rafik Ferrag additionally seen the resemblance, and in a brand new publish on Instagram right this 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 development of entrance cross-over lamp to all the business. The truth is, 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 numerous producers akin to Tesla and LX.
Proper earlier than Tesla’s unveiling of the brand new Mannequin Y, Xpeng shared the primary official pictures of its new G7 SUV, which encompasses a related front-end:
Xpeng has seen its car deliveries surge 34% in 2024 in comparison with Tesla’s deliveries being down 1%. The G7 can also be positioned to be one among Tesla’s high Mannequin Y competitor in China, which is its most essential market.
Electrek’s Take
It all the time goes full circle. There’s little doubt in thoughts that Xpeng copied Tesla up to now and whereas I can’t affirm that Tesla copied Xpeng right here, it appears extraordinarily more likely to me.
Xpeng has been doing very properly with its lineup in China this 12 months and now the G7 is critical competitors to Tesla’s fundamental cash maker: promoting Mannequin Y autos in China.
Is Tesla getting nervous?
