NIO and XPeng are two of the young Chinese automakers that specialize in smart, high-tech EV development and sales. They don’t mess with plugin hybrids. They don’t mess with “dumb cars.” They lead in tech innovation and cutting-edge deployment of new smart features, battery swapping, fast charging, and other matters. They’ve also followed similar growth paths, so it’s interesting to view them together and compare their results.
Just looking at full year-over-year growth, XPeng and NIO had quite similar results going from 2021 to 2022. Their charts look almost identical. Though, you can see that NIO went from a lower total in 2021 to a slightly higher total than XPeng in 2022. That’s a sign of a difference we’ll see highlighted much more in a moment.
You can take those same numbers and flip the charts to be paired by year rather than by brand. That’s what we’ve done here:
| Sales | 2021 | 2022 |
| XPeng | 98,155 | 120,757 |
| NIO | 91,429 | 122,486 |
The 4th quarter is where we see a real divergence in trends between these two automakers. XPeng collapsed year over year in the 4th quarter while NIO sales grew strongly.
What will 2023 bring? We’ll see! One thing is for sure, though: XPeng will want to turn things around. Its 4th quarter 2022 results were going far in the wrong direction.
| Sales | Q4 2021 | Q4 2022 |
| XPeng | 41,751 | 22,204 |
| NIO | 25,034 | 40,052 |
Related story: BYD Hits Nearly 1 Million BEV Sales In 2022
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