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He Xiaopeng counts on melding technology with transport as he transforms Xpeng’s smart electric cars in his vision of mobility

  • Xpeng’s shares, offered at HK$165 each, begin trading in Hong Kong on July 7, less than 12 months after their ADRs were offered in New York
  • The Hong Kong IPO adds US$1.8 billion of capitalisation to Xpeng, bolstering the value of the six-year-old carmaker to US$36 billion

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Illustration: Henry Wong
Daniel Ren,Pearl LiuandPeggy Sito

(Corrects Xpeng’s market value in the sixth paragraph).

He Xiaopeng’s muse for creating one of modern China’s most consequential – and successful, he hopes – technology products was an unlikely source: the line of American toys rooted in Japanese anime culture that first became popular while he was growing up in the early 1980s in central China’s Hubei province.

Hasbro’s Transformers, based on the storyline about sentient, living autonomous robots, made such an impression that He dreamt of creating products to meld technology with mobility. It was a dream that took him through a degree in computer science, followed by an early stab at entrepreneurship as co-founder of the Java-based internet browser UCWeb, culminating in today’s trading debut of his eponymous electric car brand Xpeng in Hong Kong.

“The future of mobility is vehicles integrated with robotic science” and artificial intelligence, He said in an interview with South China Morning Post via a video link from Guangzhou, where Xpeng is based. “The number of hours that people spend in the vehicle will only increase, just as they currently spend four to five hours every day on their smartphones. The implications of such [usage] scenarios are tremendous, encompassing transport, technology and finance.”

There is probably no better place on Earth for He to realise his dream than China, which surpassed the United States in 2009 as the world’s largest market for vehicles powered by internal combustion engines (ICEs). More recently, Chinese car owners have begun to embrace electric cars, a growth that may see three of every five new cars on the nation’s roads being powered by electricity by 2030, according to UBS’ forecast.
He Xiaopeng, founder and chief executive of his eponymous electric car maker Xpeng, at the launch of the company’s first model, the all-electric G3 crossover vehicle, on March 7, 2019. Photo: Handout
He Xiaopeng, founder and chief executive of his eponymous electric car maker Xpeng, at the launch of the company’s first model, the all-electric G3 crossover vehicle, on March 7, 2019. Photo: Handout
To finance his dream, He needed a lot of capital. With private equity funding from such backers as Xiaomi’s founder Lei Jun, Primavera Capital and his former employer Alibaba Group Holding, He raised HK$14 billion (US$1.8 billion) in a second primary listing in Hong Kong, less than 12 months after a US$1.72 billion initial public offering and a US$2.48 billion top-up sale in New York.
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