XPeng Confirms Over ¥1 Billion in Carbon-Credit Revenue

XPeng's vice president has confirmed what started as a market rumour: the company's carbon-credit trading with Porsche and several other international automakers is real, with total transaction revenue estimated above ¥1 billion and more than ¥500 million expected to be booked during 2026.

The arrangement was reported on 29 September by 财闻 and circulated widely in Chinese financial media, and the post that brought it to our attention — from the leaker account 烟隐烟隐 — frames it as XPeng finally having a second way to make money. On the numbers, that framing is not wrong.

What is actually agreed

The reported deals cover European Union, United Kingdom and Australian carbon regulations, and were signed in August 2026 according to the post. Porsche is the only counterparty named; the others are described only as international automakers. The ¥1bn figure is an estimate of total transaction revenue, not an audited number, and XPeng's confirmation went to the substance of the rumour rather than to the accounting behind it.

Why XPeng has credits to sell

Carbon credits are a function of what you sell and where. XPeng's overseas volume is now big enough to generate them in quantity:

• Q2 2026: overseas sales passed 20,000 units for the first time, up 81% year on year.
• H1 2026: overseas business was more than 25% of revenue.
• The company's own figures put it in 79 countries and regions, with more than 1,200 stores and access to over 3 million charging piles.

The credits come from selling EVs in markets with fleet-emissions rules: the cars earn credits, and manufacturers with heavy-emitting fleets buy them. XPeng's version is deliberately multi-partner — the post contrasts it with Leapmotor's exclusive arrangement — which means it can sell to whoever is short.

The part that matters more than the headline number

The interesting thing is not ¥1bn. It is what carbon credits and related services are already doing to XPeng's margin, and that comes from the Q2 filing rather than from this week's reporting.

In Q2 2026, XPeng's overall gross margin was 20.7%. Its vehicle margin was 12.1% — the part of the business that actually builds and sells cars. The "services and other" segment, which includes carbon-credit trading and technology services, posted ¥2.7bn of revenue at a 75.1% gross margin, and on BT财经's arithmetic that segment contributed close to half of group gross profit from under 15% of revenue.

So when the post says carbon credits carry "over 70% gross margin", that figure belongs to the services segment as a whole — carbon credits plus technology services — not to carbon credits alone. The direction is right and the precision matters: XPeng made a ¥1.34bn net loss in the same quarter, and the high-margin, non-vehicle revenue is what keeps the blended margin respectable while the car business earns 12%.

The Australia angle

Australia appears in these agreements because Australia now has a credit market of its own. The New Vehicle Efficiency Standard, in force since 1 January 2025, sets fleet-average CO2 targets and lets manufacturers trade credits against them — the same mechanism XPeng is using in Europe. It is the reason a Chinese automaker's Australian sales figures now have a balance-sheet line attached. We covered the NVES as a driver of Australian EV demand here.

What this is not

• It is not a durable moat. Credit revenue exists because rules exist and because other manufacturers are short of them. Change the rules, or have everyone comply, and the line item shrinks. Tesla has booked credit sales since 2016 on exactly this basis — a useful precedent, and also a reminder that the revenue is regulatory, not competitive.
• It is not a product story, and it is not recurring in the way software revenue is. It is a high-margin by-product of selling the right cars in the right markets.
• The counterparties are mostly unnamed. Beyond Porsche, we do not know who bought, how much each paid, or how the revenue is recognised across years.
• The Leapmotor comparison is context, not proof. Leapmotor's first full-year profit in 2025 is real and widely reported; that carbon credits were central to it is the post's framing.

Why it matters for XPeng

XPeng's stated structure is now explicit: vehicles as the base, technology services as the engine, carbon credits as a supplement, physical AI as the option. The first of those is a 12%-margin business in a price war. The other three are what the company is asking investors to value. Carbon credits are the smallest and the least defensible of them — but they are also already paying, which is more than can be said for the robot.

Source: 烟隐烟隐 (Weibo), with the deal confirmed by XPeng's vice president as reported by 财闻 and Sina Finance, and Q2 segment figures from BT财经 — translated & adapted for XPENGTech.