Text size
The Xpeng P7 electric vehicle is on display outside the New York stock exchange in New York, USA
Jeenah Moon / Bloomberg
Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer
XPeng
going up his self-driving game. On Friday, the company announced a collaboration with Lidar Livox.
Lidar is a laser-based radar that is used to help enable autonomous driving technology.
Livox is not publicly traded and is Xpeng’s first partner (ticker: XPEV) in lidar technology. Livox has not been selected by major Chinese EV manufacturer as a partner which is not always bad news for the publicly traded Lidar players including
Veoneer
(VNE) and
Luminar Technologies
(LAZR). As cars become softer – controlling more of the driving experience – lidar and other sensors should increase.
Not everyone is sold on Lidar yet, however.
Tesla
(TSLA), the most valuable car company in the world, still does not use Lidar sensors. When asked by Morgan Stanley Adam Jonas if the company would use Lidar technology if it were free, CEO Elon Musk replied, “I think if it were free, we wouldn’t forward it. “Tesla has its own processors, sensors and software for self-driving applications.
Other sensors capable of self-driving applications include optical cameras and regular radar. Right now, Lidar tends to be a more expensive option, but the cost of sensors is coming down.
XPeng is positioning itself as an EV smart producer and investing heavily in self-driving technology. It traded publicly at the end of August 2020, selling shares at $ 15. The 2020 stock closed at $ 42.83, up about 185%, far outperforming the comparative gains of
Dow Jones business average
and
S&P 500.
XPeng has recently become public, and its popularity covers the sections. Two-thirds value Buy’s stock. The average Buy ratio for companies in the Dow is around 57%.
Barron’s more cautiously, recently wrote that valuations in Chinese EV producers are too high and suggests that investors bring in profits. That article appeared in mid-December when XPeng was trading around $ 44.
XPeng trading for about 15 times estimated 2021 sales. Tesla, for comparison, trades for about 14.5 times that number. Peers of XPeng
NIO
(NIO) and
Li Auto
(LI) traded for about 15 hours and 8 times the estimated 2021 sales, respectively.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]