The experience of the past seven days was really amazing. I can confidently drive the car to work, shopping, grocery shopping, and even on highways. I feel the unique feeling that the XPeng P7 brings in almost every aspect of life.
Let’s start with a conclusion. After seven days of test driving, I can summarize my evaluation of XPeng P7 in one sentence: “I almost put down the deposit.”
Of course, this is just a metaphor. As an owner of a Model S for 16 years, I couldn’t bear to sell my car and replace it with a P7. Overall, however, XPeng’s product strength really impressed me.
In fact, for a long time, I was not optimistic about XPeng’s cars. One reason was that the name XPeng is too common in Chinese, and the other was the appearance of the first car, G3, which was not particularly impressive (sorry to G3 owners), as well as the legal disputes with Tesla. Until the release of P7, and XPeng’s breakthrough in intelligent technology, my impression of XPeng completely changed. Upgrading one’s brand is not easy, but XPeng has truly achieved this.
Below, I will share some of my experiences during the seven-day test drive.
For a car, I usually divide the experience into two parts: strong experience and weak experience. Strong experience refers to the frequently used and most critical parts of the car, while weak experience refers to the less frequently used and less important parts.
Strong Experience
Driving experience: In the gasoline era, the time it takes to accelerate to 100 kilometers per hour is an important performance indicator for a car. However, in the electric car era, any car can easily accelerate to that speed within five seconds. Therefore, in this age of performance redundancy, I think the driving experience is not worth discussing. As long as it feels good to drive, that’s all that matters.
Voice Assistant: XPeng’s voice assistant really amazed me. After waking it up once, you can have a continuous conversation with it. It can even accurately recognize which command is unrelated to your conversation with a friend, and which command is for the car. Except for the most commonly used navigation, almost all vehicle controls can be done through voice commands. Currently, I think the degree of interaction with this voice assistant is very practical and surprising. Of course, as we all know, the voice of this voice assistant is terrible. XPeng’s latest update will include a new voice, which is more pleasant and can even make you laugh.
Navigation: The biggest significance of the large screen is, of course, to navigate. XPeng uses the complete Gaode navigation experience without any complaints. It is the same as using a smartphone for navigation.Screen hardware: The display is clear and responsive, and the menu layout is reasonable. The only minor complaint is that the interface design is not high-end and looks a bit outdated.
Interior: The overall feeling is very technological with the screen design, including the stack-up of the central control panel and ambient lighting. The design sense is still good, but the luxurious feeling is somewhat weak. Of course, considering the car price, it is still very good.
Memory parking: It is very well done and can clearly display information such as parking spaces, pillars, and speed bumps in the entire parking lot, with a high level of completion. But when it comes to slightly more complicated environments and situations, it still cannot cover them. Therefore, it is excellent for showing off, but practicality still needs to be improved.
Assisted driving: This is what I want to complain about the most, because I have read many evaluation articles about XPeng’s assisted driving, which praised it a lot. So, what I wanted to try the most in this test drive was the assisted driving. However, in actual driving, every ten seconds or so, when I turned on the assisted driving on the high-speed road, it prompted me to move the steering wheel. Sometimes, the movement of the steering wheel was not large enough, and the car might not sense it, which resulted in the assisted driving quitting, and it cannot be used anymore for the rest of the driving. In this way, I could just drive the car myself. Therefore, I did not have the chance to experience any functions such as automatic driving out of the ramp, changing lanes, and overtaking.
Backup camera: The pixel of the backup camera is simply terrible. It is okay during the day, but at night, it is a disaster. You can hardly believe that it is still using such a lousy pixel camera in 2021.
Trunk: There is no physical button to open the trunk, only the key or voice command can be used. The designers who created this should be fired. Almost all other car brands are trying to add more ways to open the trunk, such as using feet. But XPeng has made it impossible for you to open the trunk even with your hands. I have been forced to open the door to wake up the XPeng voice assistant several times just to open the trunk.
Seat comfort: The leather quality, wrapping feeling, softness, and hardness of the seats can only be described as average. However, with a price of just over 200,000 yuan, you cannot ask for more. The seat ventilation function does receive good reviews.
Poor experience parts
Wireless charging: I don’t know why, but my phone keeps charging on and off when placed on the charging pad. It is unstable.
Glove box: It is too deep, and when there are too many things inside, it is difficult to find what you need.
Trunk: I don’t know if this car is designed for cost-cutting purposes, but the trunk is not designed as the liftback style. It has a large depth opening with only a small opening to access it.
Sound effects: The sound effects for getting in and out of the car are a bit too loud, and they sound like a mess. Even if the owner wants to do something bad sneakily, they cannot do it with this car. Moreover, these sound effects are a bit outdated.App: I’ve only experienced some of its features, but I feel like this app is doing a great job, at least much better than Tesla.
Conclusion:
I think it’s meaningless to talk about a car without considering its price. As a 200,000-yuan electric car, XPeng P7 has everything it should have, and it has done a great job in terms of experience in the era of electric power. As for the criticized parts in the article, some can be improved, and some not. After all, which car is perfect?
The garage staff asked me a question at last: If I were to buy a car, P7 or Model 3, which one would I choose?
I thought about it for a long time. The two cars are of similar price and have their own advantages. It’s really hard to say which one is better. Then I suddenly realized with surprise that a car of our own brand could even compete with the industry giant. So if I have to choose, I still support our own brand, and my choice is P7. I recommend it to you too.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.