CHINA: Xpeng Cuts Prices, Gotion Completes Solid State Line and NIO 7 Year Financing | 03 Mar 2026

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Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI.

They already deployed one.

It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping.

Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks.

It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love.

It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing,

and estimate trading value.

Advanced, intuitive, and deployed.

That's how they stack.

That's technology at Capital One.

I bring you the latest headlines, insights, and analysis

from the heart of China's booming EV industry.

And try and decode how fast moving developments

in the East shape the global landscape.

X-Pong has launched the all-new pure electric MPV, the X-Pong X9.

Starting price of $310,001.

That's $45,000.

That undercuts the previous model by 14% though.

And we didn't know it was coming.

It was a surprise.

And so that's about $7,000 less than the outgoing one.

The timing is obviously deliberate.

February sales fell nearly 50% year on year to 15,000 units.

X-Pong partly blamed the Chinese New Year holiday.

It published the delivery figure one day

before they unveiled the new X9 launch.

The new BEV price matches the extended range version,

which was released last year.

In other words, you no longer pay a premium to avoid the petrol pump.

The new X9 BEV sits on their 800 volts architecture

in five trims and each with 5C ultra-fast battery charging.

X-Pong claims a maximum range of 466 miles.

That's 750 kilometers on the China cycle.

They call it the world's longest range,

pure electric seven seater with 5C charging.

It's a very specific claim.

But look, this is a very premium vehicle.

Once again, we see those captain's chairs in the second row

that frankly, if I was on a long haul flight in first class,

I'd be very happy with those seats.

It does look very nice.

The pictures they released had a light colored interior

with its two spoke steering wheel

and giant landscape screen in the middle

with its dual wireless phone chargers

and a couple of big cup holders just below that.

This does look very much a premium vehicle.

It also pushes compute.

Every variant has X-Pong's in-house Turing AI chip.

2,250 tops.

The entry level model uses one chip

and the top spec car uses three.

X-Pong took the same chip approach

on its other updated models recently.

Hu Xiaoping expects international sales to double this year.

X-Pong targets 1 million overseas vehicles by 2030

and forecasts overseas operations

will be 70% of group profits by then.

That is a very good looking people carrier.

Big sunroofs as well.

It looks like a big sunshade that'll come across

and haven't got the specs on the second row.

But again, it looks like those very comfortable

second row seats that have probably got massaged,

probably ventilated.

And you know where the foot rests come up

and everything very, very nice.

All right, let's talk a little bit about Goshen high tech.

They are 25% owned by Volkswagen.

They've now finished the work

on their first two gigawatt hour solid state battery

mass production line.

And the move shifted program from pilot scale validation

to full industrial planning.

The announcement centers on Goshen's Jinxi battery.

It uses a sulfide based solid electrolyte.

This is all solid state, by the way,

not semi solid state.

And it reaches a cell level energy density

of 350 watt hours per kilogram.

Goshen says that's about 40% more

than mainstream lithium iron cells

and claims that an average battery pack,

because it's a pure solid state, would be 621 miles.

That's 1,000 kilometers.

And works just as happily as at minus 40 degrees Celsius

as 80 degrees Celsius.

That's minus 40 Fahrenheit to 176 Fahrenheit.

The existing pilot line had a 90% yield rate

and it runs entirely on domestically sourced core equipment.

Uses in-house developed architecture.

In safety tests, it survives up to 200 degrees

and a three millimeter steel needle penetration test

didn't ignite, didn't explode.

Solid state is very safe.

They're going to spend up to four billion you on.

That's 500 million US dollars on the two gigawatt hour facility.

And where will we find these solid state batteries?

Volkswagen and Audi brand vehicles.

Small to begin with, you know, small batch integration.

By the end of this year, they say full scale mass production

by 2030.

But all solid state seems very real, doesn't it?

NIO has extended its seven year low interest financing plan

through to the end of this month for four main brand models.

85, 85 touring, ES6 and EC6.

NIO launched the offer at the beginning of February for one month

but has now extended it.

It's an annualized interest rate effective of 0.49%.

And if you use NIO's battery as a service,

you can get a down payment of about $5,000.

The move lands as Chinese EV makers face mounting sales pressure in Q1

after the scaling back of national car purchase incentives at the end of last year.

Ultra long term financing does some of the work that blunt price cuts used to do

until Beijing signaled their unhappiness with that.

Now, global vehicle sales were 7.18 million units in January.

So I know we're into March already,

but we've now got all of the numbers in for January.

So global sales 7 million and a bit.

New energy vehicle sales 1.42 million on a global level in January.

That's 20% of the market.

Wind down in China's trading stimulus program

did pull those numbers back a little bit,

as did the expiration of the US tax exemptions, tax credit as well.

Battery electric vehicles were 13.3% of all global vehicle sales in January.

Plug-in hybrids 6.4, that's there we get to 19.7% of the global market.

So one in five vehicles sold had a plug socket on the side and 13% were a pure Bev.

China was that 63% of the global plug-in market.

Europe about 19% and the US about 5%.

The global EV market now looks set for a bit of an adjustment China's scale,

but it's export reach.

We'll do some heavy lifting while a reduction of the share of EVs and a political climate

in favor of oil in the United States.

Well, they must decide whether to keep up or keep out of the EV race.

German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz went to Beijing for a two-day official visit recently.

His first visit to China since taking office last May.

He took senior executives from Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz,

and BMW to keep him company on the plane.

Mr. Mertz used the trip to showcase Chinese software inside German flagship cars.

He test rode a new Mercedes-Benz S-Class with intelligent driving from Chinese

for memento after the test ride.

Mercedes-Benz showed an upgraded strategic cooperation agreement with memento.

BMW used the visit to do a deal with CATL over supply chains.

And Volkswagen set out its view of where the center of gravity sits.

It formally acknowledged China as the global core innovation hub.

Volkswagen said competitiveness in the Chinese market

is inseparable from having some global success.

China's auto exports were more than 7 million vehicles in all of 2025.

A new record and further overseas expansion will happen this year.

The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers

crediting China's edge to an end-to-end EV supply chain.

The materials, the batteries, the motors, the control systems,

the cockpits, and even the software.

Now BYD confirming the launch event in two days time on the 5th of March

for their disruptive technology event.

Now it's the date in an official WeChat post from their Shenzhen headquarters.

BYD's February EV sales were down 41% year on year.

That's six straight months of declining sales.

BYD needs to pull itself out of this nosedive that it's in,

and maybe their new technology can do it.

Market Talk links the 5th of March day presentation

to a large-scale rollout of megawatts level flash charging 2.0.

Their new charging piles are going in the ground this week

with a very distinctive cyan exterior and a T-shaped structure.

The cable pulls down from above you.

That helps with the weight because these cables can be very heavy

because they're charging at 1500 kilowatts.

They say on a single gun, a single plug BYD,

they say, and we'll find out in two days time,

some articles say Deutsche Bank, I think say the analysts at Deutsche Bank,

say that if you use two guns and two plug method,

you get 2.1 megawatts, 2100 kilowatts of charge speed.

So that's 50% higher than their first generation technology,

and they want to build 4,000 of them this year.

That's amazing.

We'll wait and see.

Well, we've got two days to wait and we'll find out.

We'll take a break.

We'll come back.

We'll talk Rocks Motor and the Buick Electric around.

Welcome back to the podcast.

Rocks Motor handed over almost 1,300 vehicles last month.

I missed them out of yesterday's February sales roundup

because they're quite a small name in the Chinese EV market,

but it doubled year on year.

January started the year at 1,000 and February was 1,302 straight months of growth,

giving the young brand a bit of a momentum.

The company was founded in 2021 as a premium EV brand built on the outdoors,

I think Land Rovers and very square boxy four by fours,

but they're quite luxury, kind of mid to large luxury off-roaders.

The Gishi 01 was their first one and then they widened the lineup last year

with the Adamas China edition using a range extended powertrain.

So 1.5 litre range in 150 kilowatt electric motor.

And there's an all wheel drive version as well with two electric motors,

44.5 kilowatt hour battery, all electric range, 134 miles or 215 kilometers.

It's expanded into 40 countries.

They do good business in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa with over 80 showrooms.

Open Middle East is 70% of Rocks' business at the moment.

Now, General Motors has unveiled the all new Buick Electra in Casa.

It's a pure Bev.

It launched this month in March as a fully electric version of Buick's full size MPV

under the Electra sub brand.

The Electra in Casa Bev expands their flagship MPV lineup at the premium end of China's

new energy segment.

The joint venture SAIC GM says that it's the in Casa plug-in hybrid.

It's the top selling luxury MPV in its price range.

And here's the Bev version.

Didn't include powertrain specifics.

It did say that the in Casa Bev will use a dual motor all wheel drive setup,

482 kilowatts of power.

It's a very, very powerful minivan, isn't it?

You can fit the family in that and also have some fun away from the lights.

The in Casa Bev will be built and sold only in and for Chinese buyers.

No sign of exports.

Now finally, Shenzhen has launched a subsidy program on the 28th of February,

backed by ultra long special treasury bonds.

It includes cars, but also home appliances and more.

The city targets for the year 35,000 scrappage combustion cars

and 180,000 trade-ins for the year.

And so this is about getting more polluting cars off the road.

For scrappage, if you scrap a combustion passenger car and buy an EV in its place,

you'll get a subsidy worth 12% of the purchase price capped at 20,000 yuan.

If you trade in your car rather than scrapping it,

so it will have a second life, you don't get quite 20,000, you get 15,000 yuan.

But yeah, if you have an old combustion car in Shenzhen,

well worth scrapping and getting a big chunk of change off a brand new EV.

That's a little way. I love a bit of scrappage schemes.

There's been scrappage schemes here over the years, never managed to take advantage of them,

but they can work out really well.

And that's your podcast for today.

Thanks for listening. See you on the next one.

CHINA: Xpeng Cuts Prices, Gotion Completes Solid State Line and NIO 7 Year Financing | 03 Mar 2026

About this episode

pure electric MPV

800 volts architecture

XPeng X9

5C ultra-fast battery charging

solid state battery

sulfide based solid electrolyte

Toyota A90

solid state batteries

Volkswagen

Audi

small batch integration

NIO

NIO EC6

NIO ES6

BMW

Mercedes-Benz Sclass

CATL

EV supply chain

software

cockpits

motors

control systems

BYD

charging piles

1500 kilowatts charging

Land Rover

all wheel drive

kilowatt hour battery

all electric range

BEV

SAIC GM

scrappage schemes

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