Tesla has unveiled its new Model Y with a revamped design in China and many have pointed out that it looks remarkably similar to Xpeng’s P7, which is funny because the Xpeng itself was a Tesla copycat in its early days.
It goes full circle.
Henry Xia, who founded Xpeng in 2014, admitted openly that he was influenced by Tesla and by the automaker’s announcement that they were open-sourcing their patents.
This will be the first company to dedicate Tesla to the free use of its patents.
But things took a turn for the worse from there.
Xpeng has gone beyond simple encouragement through Tesla and its open patents. Copied the autopilot and user interface of the Tesla cluster:
Tesla subsequently also filed a lawsuit against Guangzhi Cao, a former Autopilot engineer who quit to enroll in Xpeng’s self-driving team. The automaker accused the engineer of stealing Tesla’s Autopilot source code for Xpeng.
The lawsuit was settled in 2021. Xpeng is not a party to the lawsuit and said its own driver assistance features were based on internal development.
But Xpeng didn’t stop copying Tesla there. The Chinese company blatantly copied Tesla’s website for a brief moment in 2020:
Today, a few years later, we can simply say that the opposite is true.
Yesterday, Tesla revealed the Model Y design update in China, with the biggest update being a redesign of the front trim that is remarkably suited to the Xpeng P7 and other vehicles in the Chinese manufacturer’s range.
It has the same 3-section light bar and very soft lights that come out of the side air intakes:
Xpeng lead designer Rafik Ferrag also noted the resemblance, and in a new Instagram post today, said he believes Tesla is “paying homage” to Xpeng’s design with the new Model Y update:
In 2019, Xiaopeng P7 brought a trend of front cross-over lamp to the entire industry. In fact, this set of solutions was designed by us in 2018 and has been used as Xiaopeng’s DNA and identity since then. It is still being paid tribute to by various manufacturers such as Tesla and LX.
Just before the presentation of the new Model Y by Tesla, Xpeng shared the first official photographs of its new G7 SUV, which features a front end:
Tesla never copies anything. He invents everything he does and is the first to move. Anyone who turns out to have been before Tesla is only there because they used a time device (of course invented through Tesla) to insert themselves before Tesla. . .
Xpeng saw its vehicle deliveries building up 34% in 2024, in comparison to a 1% decline for Tesla. The G7 is also located to be a key competitor to Tesla’s Model Y in China, which is its largest market.
The circle is closed. There’s no doubt that Xpeng has copied Tesla in the afterlife, and while I can’t verify that Tesla copied Xpeng here, it’s incredibly likely to me.
Xpeng has done very well with its range in China this year and the G7 is now a serious competitor to Tesla’s main source of revenue: Model Y car sales in China.
Is Tesla getting nervous?
Fred is an editor and senior editor at Electrek.
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