First Hands-On With VW's ID.UNYX 09: XPeng Inside, Tuned Differently

The first hands-on impressions of Volkswagen Anhui's 与众09 (ID.UNYX 09) are in, and the detail that tells you the most arrived before the car even moved: the reviewer reached for "你好小P" — XPeng's wake word — in a Volkswagen.

That reflex is the whole story of this car in one sentence. Chinese auto-tech reviewer Alex智能车研究所 posted his notes on 29 September after driving it, and he says the interior and the interface triggered the habit. When we covered the launch on 24 September, the cockpit was badged 云栖智舱 (Yunqi) and described as developed with XPeng; this is the first account of what that actually feels like from the driver's seat — indistinguishable enough to make a reviewer address a Volkswagen as if it were an XPeng.

The software version is the real news

Two specifics in his post matter more than the driving impressions.

• The car's interface is the same as XOS 6.2 — XPeng's previous cockpit release.
• The assistance system's base is VLA 2.0, but not the latest upgraded version, with Volkswagen's own requirements layered on top.

Set that against XPeng's own cadence and it becomes interesting. XPeng began pushing XOS 6.3.0 to its cars in China in September, including a distilled VLA 2.0 Lite for single-Turing Max models (our coverage of that rollout is here). A Volkswagen launching in late October on a 6.2-equivalent interface would therefore arrive a version behind the company it licenses from — which is the reviewer's own point: if delivery cars track XOS 6.3-equivalent, that would be genuinely impressive.

How it drives

His description is of a car tuned away from XPeng's own house style, and not towards the traditional Volkswagen feel either: more composed and steady than a P7. The test car was the all-wheel-drive version — 503 PS, on Pirelli tyres with Brembo calipers — and he still calls the character calm rather than sporty. On hardware he quotes 91 kWh and an 800 V architecture, both of which match the figures from the launch sheet (a 91.963 kWh CATL LFP pack, dual-chamber air suspension, 5C charging).

One genuine criticism

Enthusiast posts about a brand-new Chinese EV are usually all positives, so the negative is worth quoting: he calls the AR-HUD the weak point — and then softens it with the practical point that it will not be standard equipment, so buyers who agree with him can simply not option it. He closes on the car being worth looking forward to, and rates its overall intelligence as high by Volkswagen's standards.

What this is, and is not

• One reviewer's short first drive, posted to Weibo, not a road test with measurements. Treat the driving characterisation as an impression.
• The car is not on sale yet. Pre-sales opened on 24 September at ¥199,900–249,900 with the official launch due in late October — so both the software version and the tuning can still change between this car and a customer car.
• The software versions are his observations, not statements from Volkswagen Anhui or XPeng. Neither company has published which XOS release the production car ships with.
• 503 PS is the AWD figure from the launch sheet expressed in metric horsepower (370 kW), not a new number.
• The AR-HUD judgement is subjective, and whether it is optional is his expectation rather than a published specification.

The bottom line

A licensed software stack buys a brand capability it could not build in time — and a dependency on someone else's release schedule. XPeng's cockpit and driving model in a Volkswagen, one version behind XPeng's own cars and tuned to a different brief, is what that trade looks like from the inside. The reflex that produced "你好小P" is the compliment; the version number is the catch.

Source: Alex智能车研究所 (Weibo), with specifications from our 24 September launch coverage — translated & adapted for XPENGTech.