Xpeng and Volkswagen, joining forces to develop a joint electric platform

Brand collaborations are very common in the industry, so it is no surprise that there are more and more announcements of this kind of agreement between companies. One of the latest is the collaboration taking place between Volkswagen and the Chinese company Xpeng. Both have made public an agreement under which they are both working on a new platform for electric vehicles.

This platform will be used for the manufacture of Volkswagen electric cars in China. It is called the China Main Platform (CMP) and will be developed in Guangzhou and Hefei, so engineers from both brands will work on this new platform. In fact, Volkswagen bought a 4.99% stake in Xpeng for 700 million dollars.

This investment marked the German company’s arrival in the Chinese market and will allow it to carve out a place in this demanding and booming market. The development of this platform will be handled by Volkswagen China Technology Company, SAIC Volkswagen and FAW-Volkswagen. For the moment, this collaboration is expected to bear fruit in the form of two new electric models. The first of them, both companies say, will be ready for sale in about 24 months.

With this new platform production costs will be reduced, as it will apply the latest available technology and improve the response of driver-assistance systems. In fact, it is said that it will increase the incorporation of ADAS to approach a high level of autonomous driving.

These two new electric vehicles from Volkswagen will both be mid-range. One of them is known to be a SUV, although it is not yet known what type of vehicle the second will be. Development will not end there, as four more models are also expected to be built four more models, these smaller, although this will come later.