XPENG became the official car and official supplier of France’s TOP 14 rugby league on 19 March 2026. The agreement with the Ligue Nationale de Rugby runs to 2029, covering the then-current season and the three that follow.
The reasoning is in the release, and it is the most informative sentence in the whole sequence: XPENG has 80 dealerships in France, and they already sit in all 14 cities with a TOP 14 club. The sponsorship, in other words, is drawn on top of the retail network. XPENG gets activations and premium visibility in the stadiums and across the league’s digital platforms at every fixture.
Yann Roubert, president of the league, said XPENG’s technological expertise in electric mobility, coupled with its ambition to grow across the country, chimes perfectly with the DNA of French rugby. Thomas Rodier is marketing and communications director at XPENG France.
Norway and Germany
On 1 June 2026 XPENG became the official car partner of Eliteserien through Norsk Toppfotball. XPENG calls it one of the largest sponsorship deals it has signed in Norway, and itself the first central car partner for Norsk Toppfotball in recent times. Both are the company’s own characterisations. The activities are fan zones, car displays and events on selected matchdays through the 2026 season.
On 18 June 2026 XPENG became mobility partner of the Deutscher Leichtathletik-Verband, the German athletics federation, with around 800,000 members in some 7,700 clubs. XPENG supplies cars to the national team and the federation’s staff plus event shuttles, with activation rights at the federation’s meetings. None of the three releases names a contract value, and only the French one gives an end year, 2029.
A charging figure that will not settle
The German release contains two different numbers. In a quote, Markus Schrick says the battery fills from 20 to 80 per cent in only ten minutes and calls that world-record-worthy. Four paragraphs later the X9 specification says twelve minutes from ten to 80 per cent. Two different durations and two different windows in one release. The French release three months earlier says 12 minutes without saying from what to what.
Twelve minutes from 10 to 80 per cent is the figure that recurs across XPENG’s other material.
The German release is also the best source on the X9
The same text carries the fullest European X9 figures in the archive: 20.0 to 20.8 kWh per 100 km WLTP, subject to final homologation, seven seats, air suspension as standard, rear-axle steering, 800 volts, up to 615 km WLTP for the front-wheel-drive Long Range, and up to 542 kW of charging power.
The XPENG X9 page has the car, and the markets page has the countries.
Images: XPENG
Sources
XPENG France: official car of the TOP 14 until 2029 · 19 March 2026
XPENG Norway: car partner of Eliteserien · 1 June 2026
XPENG Germany: mobility partner of the athletics federation · 18 June 2026