November 22, 2021: -On Friday, Xpeng unveiled a new electric sports utility vehicle as competition in China’s energy vehicle market continues to intensify.

The G9 is Xpeng’s fourth production model. The company is planning to launch the car in China in the third quarter of 2022, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. The person asked not to be identified because the case is confidential.

But the company said the car is designed for international markets. Xpeng began shipping its flagship P7 sedan to Norway, its first overseas market.

“G9 is our first model to be conceived and developed from the ground up for both the international and Chinese markets, which brings our most sophisticated designs to our customers worldwide,” Xpeng Co-Founder Henry Xia said in a press release.

The G9 is launching adds a fourth car to Xpeng’s lineup, after the G3 SUV and the P7 and P5 sedans. It’s the next SUV in Xpeng’s portfolio and adds another electric vehicle to that competitive segment of the market.

Xpeng’s G9 will face off against the liking of Tesla’s Model Y, Nio’s ES6, and Li Auto’s Li-One.

The G9 will be Xpeng’s first model equipped with Xpilot 4.0, the company’s advanced driver-assistance system, or ADAS, slating for rollout in the first half of 2023.

We are poised as a rival to Tesla’s Autopilot, Xpilot allowing the car to carry out semi-autonomous features such as lane switching.

Xpeng says that the G9 will be compatible with its X-Power superchargers, which allow cars to charge up to a 200-kilometer driving range in 5 minutes.

The G9 will feature Light Detection and Ranging technology, or Lidar. These systems send lasers that bounce back to measure distance. An algorithm processes those returning beams to create a three-dimensional representation of surrounding objects, a key technology for autonomous vehicles to understand their environment.