To The Moon

XPeng is offering big discounts on the P7, with a facelift of the flagship sedan set to hit the market soon.

The electric vehicle maker's stores are offering discounts on the P7 to speed up inventory clearance, local media outlet Cailian reported after visiting several XPeng experience stores.

Take the P7 625E, with a guide price of RMB 249,900 ($36,190), for example, consumers can get an RMB 10,000 cash discount and an RMB 7,000 subsidy for purchasing insurance if they buy it now, an XPeng salesperson said.

If consumers choose to trade in, XPeng stores will offer an additional RMB 18,000 in subsidies in addition to those offered by some local governments.

"That works out to RMB 35,000 for our stores alone, and the top-trim model can be bought for just slightly more than RMB 200,000," the salesperson was quoted as saying in the report.

At the other two XPeng stores, except for a slight difference in insurance subsidies, the P7 with a range of 480 kilometers is available with an RMB 10,000 cash discount and an RMB 18,000 trade-in subsidy, according to the report.

XPeng's move is similar to what its local counterpart NIO (NYSE: NIO) did in early February, both to clear inventory of older models, the report said.

The new XPeng P7, to be called the P7i, will go on sale next week, when pricing information will be announced, the report said, citing an XPeng source.

On March 1, NIO reported disappointing fourth-quarter earnings, in which gross margin slipped to 3.9 percent from 13.3 percent in the third quarter and vehicle margin fell to 6.8 percent from 16.4 percent in the third quarter.

NIO's vehicle margin was negatively impacted by 6.7 percentage points in the fourth quarter due to inventory provisioning, accelerated depreciation of production facilities and loss of purchase commitments for the current generation ES8, ES6 and EC6, the company said.

XPeng will report its unaudited financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022 on Friday, March 17, before the opening of the US markets.

On January 17, XPeng lowered the prices of all models except the G9 SUV, with three versions of the P7 being priced down by RMB 30,000 and another version by RMB 36,000.

The company delivered 6,010 vehicles in February, up 15.18 percent from 5,218 in January but down 3.45 percent from 6,225 in the same month last year.