NEW YORK, December 29, 2025, 04:11 ET — Premarket
- XPeng down 2.1% premarket after a 6.2% jump in the prior session
- Company flagged an AAAI 2026 acceptance tied to cutting autonomous-driving compute load
- China auto industry official warned of a sharp early-2026 battery-demand slowdown as incentives fade
XPeng Inc shares fell 2.1% in premarket trading on Monday, after the Chinese electric-vehicle maker’s U.S.-listed stock surged in the previous session. The stock was indicated at $20.34.
The pullback comes as investors head into the final week of the year weighing company technology updates against fresh warnings about a cooling outlook for China’s EV-linked demand in early 2026. That matters for XPeng because most of its sales are still tied to China’s fiercely competitive market, where policy incentives can swing buying patterns quickly.
XPeng ended the last regular session, on Friday, up 6.18% at $20.78, according to Investing.com data.
In a press release timed for early Monday, the company said a collaborative research paper with Peking University had been accepted by AAAI 2026, an academic conference focused on artificial intelligence. The release said the work aims to reduce the computing burden of end-to-end autonomous driving models.
XPeng said the research introduces a “visual token pruning” framework — a technique that trims the amount of image information an AI model processes — to speed up inference, or the real-time calculations a system makes while driving. Heavy onboard computation can slow response times and raises hardware costs, a key issue for automakers trying to scale advanced driver-assistance features. PR Newswire
The company said its method delivered a near 7.5-times reduction in computational load while maintaining planning accuracy on the nuScenes autonomous driving benchmark. The release also cited an acceptance rate of 17.6% for the conference this year.
XPeng framed the work as part of its push toward Level 4 autonomous driving, a term that generally refers to systems that can handle driving without human input in defined conditions.
The upbeat tone on AI arrived alongside a more cautious sector backdrop. Reuters reported on Sunday that demand for China’s lithium batteries is likely to slump in early 2026 as domestic EV sales fall and exports slow.
“Demand for new energy batteries will drop drastically,” Cui Dongshu, secretary general of China’s passenger car association, wrote in a personal social media post, according to Reuters. Reuters
Cui said green passenger vehicle sales could fall at least 30% early next year as tax incentives for car purchases are phased out, a shift that investors in EV makers and suppliers are watching closely.
Moves in U.S.-listed China EV peers were mixed before the bell. Li Auto was down 1.83% in premarket trading at $17.12, while Nio was up 1.57% at $5.18, according to Investing.com data.
For XPeng, traders will be watching whether Monday’s session brings follow-through buying after Friday’s rally, which saw the shares trade between $19.80 and $21.19.
Investors are also looking ahead to the next major corporate checkpoint: XPeng’s next earnings report is slated for March 24, 2026, according to Investing.com.
The stock’s 52-week range runs from $11.14 to $28.24, leaving it well off its highs as the market tests whether the company’s technology narrative can offset a choppier demand picture heading into 2026.
