Volkswagen's financial investment in the Chinese electric car manufacturer Xpeng, announced in July, has now been completed. The Chinese company also reported progress in the development of two electric cars.
The important details missed by the poor summary are that this is VW China, rather than one of the western VW Group subsidiaries. They’ve got quite a few partnerships in China already, and this is one of the smaller size ones percentage wise. I know this is a tech agreement between the two companies as they continue to “joint develop” vehicles, but for the life of me I can’t determine what the agreement actually does. Maybe Xpeng needs access to packs and power system components, so this might be VW China offering their supply chain in a partnership with Xpeng? That’s really the only angle that makes sense to me with such a small stake and such a small company.
For reference, VW China has partnerships with three of the “big four” in China. So if Xpeng is having issues sourcing components or scaling manufacturing volume maybe this is their play to reach out to the experts? I dunno. Interesting nonetheless.
I seriously dislike sites that do a poor job of summarizing a short investor relations release, so here’s that press release instead. https://ir.xiaopeng.com/news-releases/news-release-details/xpeng-announces-closing-new-shares-issuance-pursuant-share
The important details missed by the poor summary are that this is VW China, rather than one of the western VW Group subsidiaries. They’ve got quite a few partnerships in China already, and this is one of the smaller size ones percentage wise. I know this is a tech agreement between the two companies as they continue to “joint develop” vehicles, but for the life of me I can’t determine what the agreement actually does. Maybe Xpeng needs access to packs and power system components, so this might be VW China offering their supply chain in a partnership with Xpeng? That’s really the only angle that makes sense to me with such a small stake and such a small company.
For reference, VW China has partnerships with three of the “big four” in China. So if Xpeng is having issues sourcing components or scaling manufacturing volume maybe this is their play to reach out to the experts? I dunno. Interesting nonetheless.