Telescope on the MONA L03: 'The Best Compact Electric SUV in the World'

XPeng's cheapest car has been reviewed by one of the few English-language channels doing serious Chinese-car reviews, and 望远镜-Telescope has reached a verdict he does not hedge: as of early September 2026, the MONA L03 is "the best compact electric SUV in the world."

The 13½-minute review is unusual for what it spends its time on. Only one chapter out of twelve is about assisted driving, and the sharpest criticism is about font sizes. The thesis is narrower than the headline: this is a car with a coherent idea of itself, at a price where coherence is normally the first thing sacrificed — and, in his words, neither BYD nor Geely can match it.

▶ Play the 13½-minute review with English subtitles burned in — our subtitles, over the channel's own Chinese ones. The same file is on our YouTube channel: XPeng MONA L03 Review: 'The Best Compact Electric SUV in the World'.

The design argument

The L03 is the car that made him restart reviewing XPeng. His opening — "this car is so well done, so well finished, that I would go as far as saying XPeng is now a sub-brand of MONA" — is a joke about his own recent disappointment with the brand rather than a straight compliment.

The specific design point is about the headlight. Some people, he says, will moan that it looks like a Polestar's; a Polestar is "now struggling for its existence", while the L03 is on course to deliver more than 20,000 units a month in China, so "for most people in the world, this is actually the more familiar headlight design." The interesting part is the comparison to XPeng's own flagship: "I cannot imagine this is from the same brand that designed the horrendous GX."

That comparison runs through the review. The interior at 140,000 RMB is "very comfortable just being itself"; the GX is a 270,000 RMB car "pretending to be a 400,000 RMB car and failed miserably." His summary of the reversal is the line the whole video builds to: "the much cheaper MONA L03 has much better taste than the range-topping GX."

What he says is unusually good

• Ergonomics. The steering wheel's adjustment range is "not just huge by Chinese car standard, this is huge by European car standard" — and, with the L03 launched in Europe at the same time, he reads that as deliberate.
• Rear visibility. "It's still a bit of a letterbox," but it gives roughly triple the coverage of a Tesla Model Y, which he calls a very low benchmark. The centre headrest also lines up with the bottom of the rear screen, so it is not blocking the view — unlike the Lynk & Co 07 GT he reviewed recently.
• The rear cabin. He is explicit that the L03 is a class smaller than a Model Y and more than 20 centimetres shorter, and still has "a much better rear cabin than a Model Y could ever dream for."
• Dynamics. With steering set heavy, power and brake pedal in sport and suspension in comfort, it is "a very accomplished, dynamically, very polished car." The optional 20-inch wheels add some structural noise on 45-section tyres, but they also bring the Goodyear rubber — which he argues is the single upgrade most worth paying for.

What he does not like

• Fonts and icons. "One complaint I have with the infotainment is all of the fonts are too small — and this is coming from someone who uses the smallest font on my iPhone." Enlarging the fonts is possible; the icons stay small "for the drivers and the passengers sitting at their normal position to view." It looks good on a UI designer's screen and not in the car.
• The boot. Barely bigger than a standard European hatchback, with a little underfloor storage and "nothing to write home about." His read: the packaging went to the rear cabin instead.
• The frunk. Roughly 100 litres, but the opening is deep in the nose and faces the sky — awkward to load, easy to scratch paint, and he doubts many owners will use it. He notes that Onvo's Qinling, the model he describes as Onvo's answer to MONA and due roughly next year, should do better here.
• No rear sun blind — forgivable at the price, unlike the rest.
• One-pedal braking. The mode is there with selectable regen levels, which he calls a trick most Chinese brands miss, but the last moment before standstill rocks the car backwards in a way a Tesla does not. He demonstrates it on camera and tells you to watch his head.

The spec question

The car reviewed is the Ultra SE — the top L03, with dual Turing chips and about 100 GB of memory, which he finds remarkable in a car this cheap and notes was an expensive thing to fit in September 2026.

His recommendation is the opposite of the obvious one. Most buyers, he says, will be better off with the single-Turing Max, which is exactly where XPeng has just put its VLA 2.0 distilled model — the same distillation we have been following on the older dual-Orin hardware. On assisted driving specifically, his ranking of the dual-Turing car is: "top-tier performance, probably only below FSD Beta and Huawei's ADS 5.0 here in China" — and then he repeats the price, 140,000 RMB, as if that were the real finding.

Caveats

• This is one reviewer's verdict, delivered from the driver's seat. "Best compact electric SUV in the world" is an opinion, not a measurement, and the ADAS ranking against FSD Beta and ADS 5.0 is his own experience, which we cannot verify.
• The comparison to the GX is his own earlier review. We have not tested either car; the taste argument is his.
• The 140,000 RMB figure is the Chinese price. The L03 launched in Europe at the same time, and he says he will put the European price on screen in a later video — until then the two are not comparable.
• Praise from this channel is not uniform. He opens by saying he had stopped reviewing XPeng products after the GX, which is the context for how strong the L03 verdict is.
• The subtitles are ours. The video is the channel's; we transcribed his English narration, corrected the names and technical terms, and burned the English track above the Chinese subtitles already in the file. The original post is on Weibo.

The bottom line

The interesting thing about this review is not the verdict — it is where the praise lands. Almost none of it is about the assisted driving the company markets hardest, and most of it is about the unglamorous parts of a cheap car: how far the steering wheel moves, whether the headrest blocks the mirror, whether the boot button can be found by touch. That is the difference between a car built to a price and a car built with an idea, and it is the argument the L03's September numbers — more than 14,000 deliveries and a buyer base skewed young — are already making in XPeng's favour.

Source: 望远镜-Telescope (Weibo), English subtitles by XPENGTech — translated & adapted for XPENGTech.