A "latecomer overtaking the early bird" delivery paradox has torn open both old wounds and fresh scars in XPeng Inc. (NYSE: XPEV) supply chain management.

On November 2, Jiang Wen, General Manager of XPeng's MONA product matrix, publicly issued an apology statement on social media. Unexpectedly, the apology was not directed at the recently launched and highly touted MONA L05, but rather at the earlier-launched MONA L03, which has left tens of thousands of owners waiting anxiously.

Just three days earlier, on October 29, the MONA L05 — dubbed the "bigger L03" — was officially launched. Pricing was announced on launch day, order locking opened, vehicle allocation was completed that same evening, and nationwide deliveries began on November 1. What further unsettled L03 reservation holders was that the 5,000 pre-built vehicles XPeng had prepared for the L05 were snapped up within three minutes during the launch event. This means an L05 owner who placed an order on the evening of October 29 could potentially be driving their new car by early November, while an L03 owner who locked in their order back in July might still be waiting for their 100th day to arrive.

This phenomenon of "those who bought later get their cars first," which defies basic business logic, instantly ignited long-suppressed emotions among the L03 owner community. Jiang Wen's apology was hastily released against this backdrop.

Apology and Explanation: Why Can't Independent Production Lines Save L03's Wait?

In the apology statement, Jiang Wen attempted to dismantle owners' confusion from a production logic perspective. He explained that the L05 and L03 are manufactured at different factories using independent production lines, so their production capacities do not interfere with each other. Therefore, the L05's rapid ramp-up would not squeeze L03's delivery resources. As for why the L05 appeared faster, the answer lies in "stockpiling": the L05 learned from the L03's supply shortage, pre-producing 5,000 vehicles in advance, delivering immediately upon launch, thereby creating the impression that "XPeng speed is back."

However, this technical explanation did not quell the controversy — it instead triggered even fiercer backlash in the comments section. A large number of reservation holders posted their order-locking dates and vehicle allocation statuses, reporting that actual wait times were generally around three months, with many still unallocated after locking orders for over 90 or even 100 days. Some users sharply pointed out the logical paradox: the L03's concentrated order peak during its initial sales period had long passed, order volumes were declining, yet the officially claimed production capacity was ramping up — October deliveries had just surpassed 20,000 units, marking three consecutive months of month-over-month growth. By conventional logic, wait times should be getting shorter, but the actual experience was that they kept getting longer.

Deeper suspicions pointed to overseas markets. The L03 is positioned by XPeng as a "native global model," the company's first vehicle developed and launched simultaneously in China and Europe. After its global debut in Munich on July 16, the vehicle successively entered markets including Australia-New Zealand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand. He Xiaopeng himself personally delivered the vehicle to France's first customer in Paris on October 13. According to public information, the L03 is planned for 64 overseas markets, with approximately 12,136 blind orders in Europe from July to September. Some owners directly called out in the comments section, demanding that XPeng clarify "how many of the 20,000-plus monthly deliveries went overseas" and provide more transparent production scheduling progress and specific delivery timelines.

Not a First Offense: Promises from Three Months Ago and Reality Three Months Later

Interestingly, this was already Jiang Wen's second public apology for L03 delivery issues. In early August, he had apologized to reservation holders due to fluctuations in high-end chip supply and production line ramp-up falling short of expectations, promising at the time to "push to maximum capacity in September and October." Numerically, the promise was indeed fulfilled: the L03 recorded 8,424 units in its first full delivery month in August, rose to over 14,000 units in September, and crossed the 20,000-unit threshold in October. But the delivery cycle did not show the substantial improvement that reservation holders had hoped for.

He Xiaopeng himself also rarely addressed this issue directly at the L05 launch event. He candidly admitted: "Because of the L03's deliveries, we got absolutely hammered." He also acknowledged that "the production capacity allocation planning differed greatly from reality." Coming from the founder himself, these words were in some ways closer to the essence of the problem than Jiang Wen's apology: the L03's predicament was not simply "insufficient production capacity," but a serious disconnect between order forecasting and supply chain preparation. When the L03 launched on July 16, it surpassed 20,000 firm orders within 7 minutes and reached 46,859 orders within 1 hour. Facing an order flood far exceeding expectations, XPeng's component stockpiling, production line debugging, and logistics systems clearly were not prepared to scale up in sync.

Owner Anger Goes Beyond Waiting: Refund Difficulties and Subsidy Risks

Beneath the surface of delivery delays, more concrete disputes over interests are simmering. On the vehicle quality complaint platform, multiple L03 reservation holders complained that sales staff concealed refund rules and made false promises about refundable deposits when guiding them to lock orders. One consumer who locked an order on October 5 wrote that the salesperson had explicitly verbally promised that "if the order cannot be delivered by 2026, making it impossible to receive the provincial subsidy, the order can be refunded." But when he sought a refund because the delivery schedule was expected to drag into February or March 2027, with no hope of claiming the provincial subsidy, the store firmly refused on the grounds that the "order was already locked." Another owner who locked an order in July complained that the salesperson promised "delivery in about two months," but the actual wait was endlessly prolonged, and official customer service refused a refund on the grounds that "the salesperson does not belong to the delivery store."

These complaints reveal a more thorny problem than "the L05 being faster than the L03": when delivery delays escalate from "poor experience" to "financial loss" — the 2026 provincial trade-in subsidy deadline will not wait for XPeng's production lines — owners' patience is no longer an infinite resource. For a new energy vehicle company sprinting toward scalable profitability, the cost of deposit disputes and reputation damage caused by disrupted delivery节奏 could be far higher than opening an additional production line.

The L05's Speed Was Bought at the Cost of the L03's Slowness

To some extent, the "speed" XPeng demonstrated with the L05 was precisely bought at the cost of the L03's "slowness." Without the L03's months-long delivery agony and public opinion pressure, there would have been no decision to pre-produce 5,000 vehicles in advance for the L05. He Xiaopeng said "we have learned our lesson with the L05." For L05 owners, this statement is a promise; for L03 owners, it inevitably sounds jarring — their wait became the tuition for the next vehicle's smooth delivery.

As of press time, XPeng Inc. (NYSE: XPEV) had not published specific production scheduling details for the L03 or a breakdown of overseas versus domestic delivery data. Below Jiang Wen's apology letter, the latest highly upvoted comment read: "I don't need your apology. I need you to tell me which day my car will arrive." For an automaker branded with "intelligence," using algorithms to precisely predict orders may be difficult, but responding to waiting with sincerity should not be this hard.