In order to recoup the billions invested in XPeng, Volkswagen is no longer being a pushover.
“Now I announce that the starting pre - sale price of the Yuezhong 08 is 239,900 yuan.”
On March 26th, Liu Zhanshu, the Chief Operating Officer of Volkswagen (Anhui) Digital Sales and Service Co., Ltd., officially announced the pre - sale price of the first cooperative model between Volkswagen and XPeng. According to Liu Zhanshu, the entry - level prices of products in the same class as the Yuezhong 08 are all 250,000 yuan or higher. Therefore, the pre - sale price starting from 239,900 yuan is quite competitive.
In this regard, Liu Zhanshu is not exaggerating. The XPeng G9, which is closely related to the Yuezhong 08, also starts at a price of 248,800 yuan. In other words, the Yuezhong 08, which is built on XPeng's technology in multiple core areas from the electronic and electrical architecture to the assisted - driving system, has a lower starting price than XPeng's products in the same class.
Regardless of how the Yuezhong 08 performs in the market in the future, the launch of this new Volkswagen model is definitely not good news for the XPeng G9, whose sales have been at the bottom among the brand's models in the past year (from March 2025 to February 2026).
Returning to the Yuezhong 08, the reason why Volkswagen Anhui has set a price strategy that seems to backstab XPeng is probably that, on the one hand, this youngest Volkswagen joint - venture car company desperately needs a blockbuster new model to enhance its market presence, and on the other hand, it has made extraordinary investments in the Yuezhong 08.
As a strategic move by Volkswagen for the new energy vehicle market in China, Volkswagen Anhui had only launched one model, the Yuezhong 06, before the Yuezhong 08.
This car is built on the Volkswagen MEB platform and is a “relative” of SAIC Volkswagen's ID.4X and FAW - Volkswagen's ID.4 CROZZ. From a cost perspective, the R & D of the Yuezhong 06 does not require a large amount of resources. Perhaps this is also the reason why the sales of the Yuezhong 06 have been sluggish for a long time, but Volkswagen Anhui has been taking things slowly.
In contrast, the Yuezhong 08 is a different story.
Since Volkswagen and XPeng Motors became strategic joint - R & D partners, the technical R & D service fees paid by Volkswagen to XPeng Motors have become an important source of income for the latter.
According to the financial report, XPeng Motors' “service and other income,” which mainly includes used - car sales, maintenance, and charging services, was 2.67 billion yuan in 2023. After including the technical R & D service fees in this category in 2024, it soared to 5.04 billion yuan, and further increased to 8.34 billion yuan in 2025.
Although XPeng Motors did not separately list the income from providing technical R & D services to Volkswagen in its financial report, judging from the year - on - year growth of over 60% in the “service and other income” revenue scale and the growth of over 20 percentage points in the profit margin of the “service and other” business, the technical R & D service fees paid by Volkswagen to XPeng Motors are easily in the tens of billions.
It is worth mentioning that before paying the technical R & D service fees to XPeng Motors, Volkswagen had already invested approximately 700 million US dollars (equivalent to about 5 billion yuan) to acquire a 4.99% stake in the latter.
Considering the pre - sale price range of 239,900 - 299,900 yuan for the Yuezhong 08, Volkswagen Anhui needs to sell at least tens of thousands of Yuezhong 08 cars to recoup the cost of using XPeng Motors' technology. In the past year (from March 2025 to February 2026), Volkswagen Anhui sold less than 10,000 cars.
From this perspective, it is not surprising if the Yuezhong 08 has a more aggressive pricing when it is officially launched.
However, it should be noted that the Yuezhong 08 will not be the only model of Volkswagen Anhui that uses XPeng Motors' technology. At present, it is known that a sedan similar in positioning to the XPeng P7 is also in the planning. More “Dapeng” models will share the new - car R & D investment cost of Volkswagen in XPeng Motors.
Returning to the pre - sale price of the Yuezhong 08, since the specific configuration details of the model have not been announced, the market has mixed opinions on its pre - sale price range of 239,900 - 299,900 yuan.
Some voices believe that although the pre - sale price threshold of the Yuezhong 08 is about 10,000 yuan lower than that of the XPeng G9, if the entry - level model does not come standard with an air suspension like the XPeng G9, its price advantage will be greatly reduced. At the same time, some netizens are worried that although the Yuezhong 08 comes standard with two self - developed Turing chips from XPeng with excellent computing power, whether the assisted - driving software will use the second - generation VLA model in sync with XPeng Motors.
In fact, for Volkswagen Anhui, how to decouple the Yuezhong 08 from the XPeng G9 in the public opinion field may be a more important issue.The XPeng G9 has never been a best - selling model in terms of sales. To enhance the brand image of Volkswagen Anhui and Volkswagen in the new energy field, the Yuezhong 08 should set its sights on models such as the Tesla Model Y and the Xiaomi YU7.
This also means that Volkswagen Anhui needs to be more aggressive when the Yuezhong 08 is officially launched.
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This article is from the WeChat official account “Yuanmeihui,” author: Pan Zhuolun, published by 36Kr with authorization.