Could this be the nicest car that you've never heard of?

Sean O’Grady reckons the whisper-quiet XPeng G6 Standard might just be about to make a big noise in the SUV market

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XPeng. Nothing to do with The X-Files. Nor the (Nissan) X-Trail.

Nor, even, XÆ A-12 Musk (his son, via the musician Grimes) and nothing else spawned by the erstwhile head of Doge (which is just as well). The X in XPeng, and I did have to look this up, derives from the name of the co-founder of the company, He Xiaopeng. As unfamiliar as it might be to the British, it’s the equivalent of Ford, Peugeot or Austin.

Yes, it is yet another new entrant to the car market from a Chinese brand you have probably never heard of, and the influx is quite difficult to keep up with. It reminds me a bit of the steady incursion of Japanese marques that accelerated in the 1970s until almost all of them, from Toyota to Nissan to Honda to Daihatsu to Isuzu, offered their own challenges in the marketplace.

Now we will have to get more used to BYD, Leapmotor, Omoda, Jaecoo, Nio, Zeekr, GWM, Leapmotor, Dongfeng, et al, plus what you might call the Sinofication of “Western” brands either controlled by Chinese entities, such as Volvo, Lotus and MG, or in close collaboration, including Tesla, Stellantis (Peugeots, Fiats, and VW Group). Which brings us nicely back to the Guangzhou Xiapeng Motors Technology Company Limited, to grant it its full dignity.

VW have a 4.9 per cent stake in the company (which was only founded in 2017), and I assume that is why VW, custodian of the Porsche brand, are perfectly happy to have their Chinese partners manufacture something that, from most angles, is a dead ringer for a Porsche Cayenne.