XPENG G9 (2025 – ) review

The highlight of the Xpeng G9’s tech-fest is its big 93kWh lithium-iron-phosphate battery, the chemistry of which is reckoned to be more robust and long-lived than a lithium-ion battery. It also charges ridiculously fast, with a peak DC rate of 525kW, which allows the battery, in theory, to do a 10-80 per cent charge in just 12 minutes. Which is amazing, but it’s not going to help running costs, as that kind of ultra-fast public charging is expensive – sometimes approaching £1 per kWh for the fastest charging points. More usefully, the G9’s range seems to be solidly in the 300-mile ballpark in daily driving conditions, so you might not need to charge up all that often. Cost-wise Xpeng sees itself as a premium brand, so when the G9 eventually arrives in the UK, sometime in late 2026, it won’t come with a bargain price tag.

It’s impossible to tell yet how dependable the Xpeng G9 is going to be. Xpeng is a very new brand – it has only been making cars since 2014 in China, and it’s only been on sale in the UK for a few months so far - so getting a handle on its reliability is a tricky task. On the upside, electric cars tend to be reliable and Xpeng’s joint venture in China with Volkswagen shows it can meet European quality standards. Beyond that, it’s guesswork for now and Xpeng’s warranty is a mixed bag – it runs for a healthy five years, but unlike Hyundai’s unlimited mileage warranty, Xpeng’s is capped at 75,000 miles.

The Xpeng G9 has been tested by Euro NCAP and, like the smaller G6, it took home a five-star rating with high scores in the individual categories. The G9 comes festooned with safety features, including adaptive cruise control, lane keeping and automated lane changing, a surround-view camera system, a driver attention monitor and more, but we have to question the Xpeng’s safety credentials when it insists on putting safety-critical functions such as headlight and fog light controls onto the big touch-screen, and buried in a sub-menu at that. That’s the sort of thing that should always and only be managed by physical buttons.

Slide into the buttery-soft front seats of the G9, clad as they are in Nappa leather, and you’ll assume comfort is this car’s one overriding priority. Up to a point, you’d be right – certainly, those seats are excellent – but the G9 trips up a little on the move. In spite of having air suspension and adaptive dampers the G9 feels a little clunky and heavy-footed around town, almost shuffling over bumps and lumps in the road. It gets much smoother at higher speeds, and perhaps the 21-inch alloy wheels have a role to play here, but the G9 isn’t quite as luxuriant as you think it might be. It’s very refined at speed, though, with barely a whisper of wind nor road noise.

This being the range-topping G9 model, it’s not lacking for equipment. There are heated, ventilated and massaging front and rear seats for a start. The 14.9-inch touch-screen infotainment system is complemented by an auxiliary screen for the passenger of the same size, with the likes of YouTube, Disney+ and Netflix. There’s a huge heat-absorbing glass roof, adjustable driving modes and suspension levels, automated parking with mobile-phone control and an excellent Dynaudio stereo. To be honest, it’s hard to think of much that this G9 lacks.

The Xpeng G9 AWD Performance more than lives up to its name with a 575 horsepower twin-motor all-wheel-drive system that accelerates this massive 2.4-tonne SUV to 62mph in just 4.2 seconds. It’s an addictive kind of power, but sadly the G9 doesn’t back it up with pin-sharp handling. It always feels like the towering behemoth that it is, and lacks the sort of incisive driving experience that you’d get from a BMW iX, for example. The range is impressive though – against an official 334-mile claimed for this Performance model we recorded a useable range of 300 miles, and there’s a longer-range, single-motor model which will go for up to 362 miles.