XPENG G6 SUV (2025 - 2025) Electric review

The Xpeng G6 range in the UK starts from just under £40,000, which is impressively less than you’d pay for a basic Tesla Model Y, the car that G6 has rather obviously been designed to compete with. Bottom-line price is less relevant than monthly costs given the way most people buy their cars these days, but it’s still a useful comparison and that £5,000 gap compared to the Tesla isn’t to be sniffed at. This two-motor AWD Performance version should have a price of just under £50,000 when it arrives in the UK early next year, which again makes for an impressive saving compared to an equivalent Tesla. It also lands the Xpeng right into the fight with cars like the Volvo C40, Polestar 2, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6 and myriad others. Strong rivals all, meaning Xpeng has to offer something pretty special to turn heads. We’ll get to that, but beyond the purchase costs the usual electric car advantages apply, especially if you can home charge, run it as a company car or otherwise benefit from the various incentives to switch.

Xpeng is a young company with no track record beyond its home market in China, and the G6, although already updated, is still a very new model. Xpeng clearly has some serious resources, and a recent technical partnership with Volkswagen suggests its know-how is respected by big-name players. But it’s fair to say you’ll be taking a punt it can deliver on that if you choose one over established rivals, especially those with long warranties like the Kia or Hyundai. Xpeng’s warranty matches Hyundai, but it doesn’t come with unlimited mileage.

For all the impressive range of standard driver assistance tech we’re deducting points here for the way the G6, like too many modern cars, buries safety-critical controls in its touch-screen menus. Look at it this way – if you’re found tapping away at a handheld smartphone it’s six points on your licence and a big fine. Yet to do something as important as switch a foglight on or adjust the mirrors you have to take your eyes off the road long enough to go two or three levels deep in the touch-screen menu. In exactly the kind of situation where the driving conditions demand your full attention. Simply adjusting the airflow from the vents means more time in the menus not looking where you’re going. Even the supposed aids are more annoying than helpful, the lane-keeping bouncing you between the white lines on the motorway like a drunk driver while the automated lane-changes – while slick – are a waste of time on the basis to make the system work you have to manually select the indicator and check the mirror anyway. Begging the question exactly what you’re gaining having the car finish the manoeuvre. Big blind spots around the sides of the windscreen meanwhile make roundabouts and junctions a guessing game at times as well, and nor did we enjoy the face scanning camera that, ironically, tells you off for taking your eyes off the road to use the screens.

We’ve driven video game driving simulators with more convincing responses than the Xpeng G6, although this updated version does rather more to convince on the handling front. It certainly feels solidly planted, but there’s little-to-no fun to be had. Sharper bumps are well covered, but the G6 doesn’t handle with the polish of rivals like the Kia EV6 and Xpeng’s relative lack of experience shows compared with the more established players it’s up against. It is an otherwise spacious and comfortable car, though, the tall driving position very much en vogue and driver and front seat passenger divided by a tall centre console with a large storage bin under the armrest, cooled wireless charging pads for two devices up front with another, open-sided, stash space underneath. There’s no glovebox, though. Nor is there a front storage ‘frunk’ under what would be the bonnet where you might otherwise put your charging cables, though there is some room under the boot floor where you can keep them out of the way of the rest of your stuff. It’s a decent size as well, if a little shallow in depth. While the centre position is a little raised all three rear seat passengers get a great deal, though, with tons of leg space thanks to the flat floor and plenty of headroom, even with that coupe-style sloping profile, the standard heat-absorbing panoramic glass roof contributing to the airy, spacious feel. The rear backrest can recline as well, which robs a bit of boot space but is great for kicking back and relaxing on longer journeys.

All Xpeng G6 models come in essentially the same single level of high specification, and the only options are storage and interior protection accessories, or the upgrade to this new Black Edition version. Inevitably given Xpeng’s tech background nearly everything is run through the digital instrument cluster and huge central screen, both impressively slick but running the typically fiddly smartphone-inspired graphics and interfaces seen on many Chinese-built cars. Niggles include the annoyingly small numbers for basics like speed readouts on the instrument cluster and air-con controls buried in a busy side menu on the main screen rather than easily accessible via a prominent ‘toolbar’ as they are on some other systems. Fresh from driving the likes of the Renault Rafale and BMW i5 Touring with their big, bold and easy to use operating systems this is especially telling. However, Xpeng is rapidly updating its software and performance all the time, and it was noticeable how much easier the big screen was to use this time around, while the likes of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, previously absent, are now included and work well. There are certainly no complaints about the amount of stuff you get, though, features including an in-house premium stereo system, heated seats for all but the centre passenger in the back and ventilation and power adjustment for those up front, a heated steering wheel, power-saving heat pump for the climate control (often a cost extra on rivals), power tailgate, ‘vehicle to load’ compatibility for powering hedge trimmers or charging e-bikes, an app to control the car remotely for charging and pre-heating and much more.

Unusually, Xpeng seems to have made its battery better by making it smaller. The updated G6 ditches the nickel-manganese-cobalt 87kWh battery of the existing model in favour of an 80kWh lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery. LFP batteries are cheaper to make and seemingly more robust, but what’s remarkable about this one is how fast it charges. Xpeng claims it can cope with up to 451kW of DC fast-charging power which is … more power than any charger in the UK currently provides. If you could find a charger that powerful, in theory, you could charge this G6 AWD Performance from 10-80 per cent in just 12 minutes, significantly faster than any rival. Even on slower UK chargers right now, you should still be able to top-up in as little as 13-14 minutes. Doesn’t a smaller battery mean less range, though? Yes, but that’s not the full story. The G6’s range has dropped from the 354 miles offered by the current Long Range single motor model to 331 miles, while this AWD Performance model manages a claimed 309 miles. However, what’s impressive is how close the G6 seems able to get to its official claimed range. We’re used to mentally subtracting around 50-60 miles from most EV range claims to guesstimate a real-world range, but this new G6 seemed set fair to hit its official range bang on, even with a long test drive and plenty of very rapid miles driven on German Autobahns. That’s truly impressive, and combined with that incredible charging performance, means the the G6 might actually be a more day-to-day useable electric car than many others.