I’ve had a lot of firsts covering tech, not least of which was recently reviewing a cologne based on a computer game. I can add covering a car launch to this list of firsts now too. I’ve just spent a couple of days in Munich with XPeng and the new L03 two days before the covers came off. I sat in it, poked at every screen and heard the full pitch, but I haven’t driven it yet, so this is a first impression, not a review.
What I can tell you first-hand is that it impresses on paper, feels incredibly comfortable and premium inside, and that the Ferrari design lineage is unmissable in person. XPeng poached JuanMa Lopez, Ferrari’s head of exterior design for eight years and the man who worked on the LaFerrari, and it shows from every angle.
The L03 itself is a 4.6 metre electric SUV coupe, XPeng’s third SUV alongside the G6 and G9. It promises up to 520 km of WLTP range, and XPeng is aiming it squarely at the VW ID.4, Skoda Elroq and BYD Atto 3 while being a full size bigger than all of them.
That’s the pitch in a nutshell. A proper mid-size car squaring up to compact SUVs, with tech the German brands reserve for their flagships. There’s also a range extender version claiming 1,000 km that might be the most interesting thing here for Irish drivers, but more on that shortly.
Ferrari fingerprints all over it
Design is the story XPeng leads with, and having seen the L03 in Munich, I get why. This doesn’t look like a car built to a budget. The fastback roofline gives it a proper SUV coupe stance, and the front end is dominated by what XPeng calls Starship headlights, a light bar built from more than 400 LEDs. Park it beside an ID.4 and there’s no contest on kerb appeal, though chatting to others at the launch, not everyone agreed, so file that under personal taste.
That Ferrari lineage does the heavy lifting here. Lopez spent eight years shaping Ferrari exteriors before XPeng hired him, and he also led interior design at Lamborghini, so both sides of the glass have supercar fingerprints on them.
The slippery shape isn’t just for show either. The L03 has a drag coefficient of 0.228, which XPeng got to with active grille shutters, frameless mirrors with integrated cameras, carefully placed air ducts and low rolling resistance tyres. The short version is that a slipperier car spends less battery fighting the air, so more of that quoted range survives contact with a motorway.
It comes in five colours plus a black special edition, though the exact palette varies by country. Two of the colours are new to XPeng entirely, a rock grey and the phantom purple my studio car wore. The purple is the one I’d point you at; it shifts constantly under light and photographs far better than purple has any right to.
Versions and Irish availability
The L03 is expected in Ireland from September 2026, and XPeng already has a proper foothold here with five dealers, three in Dublin and two in Cork. That matters more than it sounds for a brand plenty of Irish buyers are still getting to know; you can actually go and sit in one without a ferry being involved.
The L03 arrives in four flavours:
- Standard range, 445 km WLTP
- Long range, 520 km WLTP
- Performance AWD, 440 km WLTP
- Ultra, available on long range and performance only
The play here is simple enough. This is a 4.6 metre car, a proper mid-size SUV, going after compact SUVs like the ID.4, Elroq and Atto 3. XPeng made that comparison itself in the briefing, so it’s inviting the fight.
Range, batteries and charging
The numbers here are solid rather than showy. Depending on the version you’ll get a 58.3 or 71.2 kWh LFP battery, good for 445 to 520 km WLTP, and every grade gets a heat pump as standard. That last bit matters more than it sounds; it’s the difference between winter range dipping and winter range falling off a cliff, and plenty of rivals still charge extra for one.
Charging is where the L03 punches above its class. It’ll pull up to 236 kW from a DC charger, taking the battery from 10 to 80 per cent in 20 minutes. In real terms, that’s a coffee and a toilet stop on the Dublin to Galway run, not a rearranged afternoon. AC charging at home tops out at the usual 11 kW.
The 1,000 km range extender
Alongside the pure electric models, XPeng will offer the L03 as a PowerX EREV, an electric car with a petrol generator on board. You get 210 km of proper electric range, and when the battery runs low a small petrol engine fed by a 42 litre tank kicks in to charge it back up. The engine never drives the wheels, not once, it’s purely a generator. Combined, XPeng claims 1,000 km of range.
This is not the hybrid you already know. In a BYD or a Toyota the petrol engine takes turns driving the wheels. In a Nissan e-Power the engine only generates electricity, but the battery is tiny and you can’t plug it in. The L03 PowerX is an EV first, with 210 km of plug-in range covering most people’s week, and the petrol bit exists purely for the days you’d otherwise be planning your life around chargers.
For Ireland, this thing writes its own argument. Rural drivers with long runs and thin charging coverage, and the huge chunk of the country with no driveway to charge on, are exactly who EV sales have stalled with. A car that does the school run and commute on cheap electricity but crosses the country without a single charging stop is the answer to the question those buyers keep asking. For now though, XPeng has only confirmed the PowerX for Italy, Spain, Portugal and “some other countries”. Norway is explicitly not getting it due to the country’s excellent infrastructure.
Useful as it is, the extender undermines one of the key selling points of an EV for me. I don’t want to go to a petrol station if I have an EV, and to top up the extender, you’ll have to do exactly that. I get the logic behind it, but having an EV with fuel emissions feels like a step in the wrong direction.
The tech, and what Ireland actually gets
One thing that surprised me is that this Chinese car is fully integrated with Google, and China and Google traditionally don’t play nice together. Google Maps runs natively on the big screen, not mirrored from your phone, no cable, no Android Auto handshake, it’s just there when you get in, with Google Play alongside it for apps. Android Auto is still fully supported if you want your phone running the show, but the point is you won’t need it. XPeng has done this with an integrated Google SDK rather than handing the whole dashboard over to Google the way Volvo does, so the car’s own software stays in charge.
That software lives on a 15.6 inch 2.5K central screen, backed by an 8.8 inch driver display and a huge 26.8 inch head-up display projected onto the windscreen. European cars get the driver display as standard, which explains why some photos online show a bare dash; that’s the Chinese spec, where it’s optional. There’s an AI voice assistant handling most controls, though I couldn’t get this to work. Full disclosure, we were told the software is not yet final, so here’s to a review car coming my way around launch time.
Then there’s the Ultra grade, the halo of the range. Three of XPeng’s own Turing chips power what it calls VLA 2.0, a vision-based autonomous driving system that promises point-to-point navigation and a party trick where you drag a line on the parking camera and the car parks itself along it. I doubt that will come to Ireland, but arguably it would be a silly investment.
Silly, because none of that autonomous capability works in Ireland at launch. The rollout starts in Germany and France in 2027, and Ireland and the UK don’t have a date at all. Buy an Ultra here and you’re paying for hardware that sits waiting on regulators. XPeng is upfront that the hardware is ready and the software will come, but nobody can tell you when “will” becomes “does”.
Being realistic about it, given Ireland is currently considering banning electric scooters and making life difficult for drone deliveries, it feels autonomous driving is some way away.
The safety kit is live everywhere though, 17 active safety features including blowout stability control and a driver incapacitation system that detects an unresponsive driver, pulls the car over and calls emergency services. Some of those safety features depend on the autonomous systems arriving here, mind.
What it’s like to sit in
Again, I haven’t driven the L03, so treat this as first impressions from the passenger seat rather than a verdict. But I spent proper time in the car, and the thing that stuck with me is how comfortable it is in both rows. Plenty of SUV coupes sacrifice the back seats to that sloping roofline; this one hasn’t, and I say that as a big lad who tested it. There’s geansaí loads of leg room in the back, partly down to the lack of a gearbox bump, so no more calling shotgun.
Honestly, you’d be as happy being driven in the L03 as driving it.
The front seats are heated, ventilated and massaging as standard, which is spec you’d pay four figures to option on a German badge. It all feels modern and premium in there, and nothing I touched gave the game away that this is meant to be the accessible end of the range.
The practical stuff is well thought out too. It’s the first XPeng with 40/20/40 split rear seats, the boot holds 367 litres with another 89 in the frunk, and it’ll tow 1,500 kg. My favourite touches are the X-Mag magnetic mounting points in the roof and a dedicated GoPro mount on the dash; someone at XPeng clearly makes content on the move.
I feel I would have gotten so much more from driving this car, but for now, that’s your lot.
The Goosed verdict
I went to Munich expecting another decent Chinese EV, and I left thinking the L03 might be the most convincing “why would you pick the German option?” argument yet made. The design is the real thing, not a knock-off of the real thing, the cabin is a lovely place to sit, and the spec sheet reads like a car from a segment or two above.
I’m not sold on the extender and plenty of smarts in the Ultra are locked behind countries catching up. But even the standard car is offering an awful lot, and that’s what will turn heads. There are plenty of Chinese brands making better smartphones than the one in your pocket. The XPeng L03 is the automotive extension of that, assuming it drives well when I get to test it.
The XPeng L03 is expected in Ireland from September 2026, available through XPeng’s five Irish dealers, three in Dublin and two in Cork. Pricing and full availability to follow.
