Xiaopeng Motors, also known as Xpeng, first made waves at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show with the introduction of the G3, an all-electric SUV that it’s planning to release later this year to combat the Tesla Model X. Now, the latest in a litany of Chinese electric car startups is dreaming of a bigger piece of the electric car market, and according to the South China Morning Post, it has accumulated a fresh batch of investments totalling $350 million. All told, the company says it has received around $800 million in funding from investors like Chinese e-commerce colossus Alibaba and iPhone manufacturer Foxconn.

It’s become common practice for us to be skeptical of Chinese electric car startups. We’ve seen many companies make bold promises and fail to deliver on those promises. That’s a big reason skepticism is a prevalent reaction to all these Chinese companies looking to enter the electric car segment.

To its credit, Xpeng might be the exception to this, not the rule. It appears to have enough money to get its programs off the ground, received from what is an impressive lineup of investors. All signs seem to point in the right direction for Xpeng to make a name for itself. “The funding round is a milestone for Xiaopeng,” company co-founder and chairman He Xiaopeng told SCMP. “While financing may be vital to the survival and development of internet cars, game-changing factors depend on innovation, rapid execution and product managers with a customer-centric mindset.”

Xiaopeng isn’t wrong with his assessment of success in the auto industry. It’s just that we’ve seen this song and dance before. We’ve been subjected to other startups making incredible promises and then failing to deliver on those promises. It’s hard to enough to break through in any industry. It’s even harder to do it in a business where innovation and money ring like omniscient truths. Simply put, it’s hard to believe a startup with promises of being a presence in a segment dominated by Tesla and a number of other established automakers.

Even the company’s SUV offering, the G3, leaves us with more questions than answers. Beyond what we saw at CES — it has an admittedly appealing design — we don’t know a lot about it other than its reported output of 190 horsepower will help it deliver 186 miles of range. The SUV will reportedly carry a price of around $50,000, putting it in a segment that includes the Mercedes GLA, BMW X1, and Audi Q3. By comparison, the Tesla Model X starts at around $120,000 in China.

More details are expected to be unveiled soon, but until we can paint a clear picture of what Xpeng is and how far along it is in the development of its projects, it’s hard to react to its progress as a company beyond giving it a wait-and-see mindset.

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