【Autohome Industry】In the first half of 2026, the domestic auto market encountered headwinds, with the market size shrinking significantly. "New force" automaker XPeng Inc. (NYSE: XPEV / 09868.HK) came under pressure. In the first half of the year, XPeng's delivery volume fell 15.8% year-on-year to 166,000 units, and the company's revenue also decreased 3.8% year-on-year to 32.78 billion yuan. On the evening of August 24, XPeng released its second-quarter and first-half performance, disclosing the above data.
However, in the second quarter, XPeng's delivery volume stabilized, edging up 0.1% year-on-year to 103,000 units. In the quarter, XPeng's auto sales rose 1% year-on-year to 17.05 billion yuan. Over the same period, the company's total revenue reached 19.74 billion yuan, up 8.0% year-on-year.
According to statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, domestic auto sales in the first half of the year fell 21.1% year-on-year to 9.921 million units. Of this, new energy vehicle domestic sales reached 5.09 million units, down 13.4% year-on-year. Many automakers, including XPeng, have accelerated their expansion into overseas markets.
In the second quarter, XPeng's overseas sales exceeded 20,000 units for the first time, up 81% year-on-year. During the earnings call held on August 24, He Xiaopeng, Chairman and CEO of the company, said that the average selling price of XPeng's vehicles in overseas markets exceeds 40,000 euros, and both per-vehicle revenue and per-vehicle gross profit are at relatively high levels. He also added that in the first half of 2026, the proportion of overseas revenue in total revenue had exceeded 25%.
XPeng held a new car launch event in Munich, Germany in July, and its new SUV positioned for the mass market was launched simultaneously in Europe and China. This is the first time XPeng has chosen an overseas location as the launch site for a brand-new model. He Xiaopeng said that this new product will start overseas deliveries in the fourth quarter, and is expected to drive the company's quarterly overseas sales to exceed 40,000 units. He also stated that in 2027, XPeng will launch a number of range-extended products overseas to further expand regional coverage and market share.
XPeng is also trying to introduce its intelligent assisted driving solutions for overseas implementation. He Xiaopeng said that the team recently completed the localized acceptance test of its second-generation VLA (Visual-Language-Action) assisted driving solution in Germany, with the goal of obtaining European regulatory approval in the first half of 2027 and starting to deliver intelligent assisted driving solutions to more overseas users.
For the third quarter performance, XPeng has given relatively optimistic guidance. The company estimates that third-quarter delivery volume is expected to be between 115,000 and 121,000 units. If the upper limit of the guidance is reached, the company's sales in the quarter will achieve a 4.3% year-on-year growth. XPeng estimates that the company's third-quarter revenue will be between 21.7 billion yuan and 23.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.47% to 14.81%.
It is worth noting that the relevant revenue brought by the cooperation with Volkswagen AG is continuing to provide certain support for XPeng's performance. In the second quarter, the company's revenue from services and other businesses increased 93.9% year-on-year to 2.7 billion yuan. The growth of this segment's revenue is mainly driven by technology R&D services and spare parts sales, with the bulk of the increment coming from the cooperation with Volkswagen.
In the second quarter, the profit margin of XPeng's services and other businesses reached 75.1%, up 21.5 percentage points year-on-year. Over the same period, the gross margin of the company's auto business was only 12.1%, down 2.2 percentage points year-on-year. Driven by the technology service business, XPeng's overall gross margin increased 3.4 percentage points year-on-year to 20.7%.
XPeng first achieved quarterly profit in the fourth quarter of 2025, but this momentum did not continue into 2026. In the first half of the year, XPeng's net loss under Non-GAAP was 2.92 billion yuan, an increase of more than 2.1 billion yuan year-on-year; in the second quarter, XPeng's net loss under Non-GAAP was 1.24 billion yuan, an increase of 850 million yuan year-on-year.
Surging R&D investment is one of the main factors dragging down XPeng's profit performance. In the first half of 2026, XPeng's R&D expenditure reached 5.82 billion yuan, up 39% year-on-year. Of this, in the second quarter, XPeng's R&D expenditure was 2.91 billion yuan, up 32.1% year-on-year.
In addition to developing new models, XPeng's continued layout in technology directions such as autonomous driving and embodied intelligence also requires large amounts of R&D investment. XPeng is trying to convert these R&D investments into performance as soon as possible.
He Xiaopeng said on the earnings call that at present, the company's Robotaxi (autonomous taxi) built based on the second-generation VLA solution has completed more than 2,000 internal test orders in Guangzhou, has run through the entire process of manned demonstration operation, and is expected to realize passenger operation without safety officers in 2027.
He also stated that it will cooperate with domestic and foreign mobility platforms to expand the scale of Robotaxi business in core cities at home and abroad, and realize commercial returns through whole vehicle sales, technical services and operation revenue sharing.
XPeng is also promoting its humanoid robot product "IRON" to enter the mass production stage by the end of 2026. The initial application scenarios are XPeng's stores and parks, and it plans to deliver to domestic and foreign users in 2027. On the same day of the release of the second-quarter financial report, XPeng also announced that it will introduce 900 million US dollars of financing for the robot business, of which 600 million US dollars comes from external sources.
He Xiaopeng said that in 2027, according to market demand, the monthly production capacity of XPeng's humanoid robots can be quickly increased to thousands of units. He stated that humanoid robots can not only generate hardware sales revenue, but also have continuous revenue brought by the upgrade of software AI (artificial intelligence) model capabilities, and the average price and gross profit performance of a single unit will be significantly higher than that of auto products.