Xpeng now offers customers a certain amount of free charging at a total of 1,648 charging stations in 221 cities.

Xpeng Motors said Thursday it put 40 new supercharging stations into operation in September, bringing the total to 439, covering 121 cities in China.

It also put 27 destination charging stations into operation in September, bringing the total to 108, the company said.

To date, Xpeng offers users a certain amount of free charging at a total of 1,648 charging stations in 221 cities, according to the company.

Twenty cities, including Taiyuan, Shenyang, Yichang and Guilin, saw their first Xpeng-branded supercharging stations go into operation, according to the company.

In September, Xpeng also completed contracts related to the construction of more than 100 supercharging stations, the company said.

Xpeng began offering customers a free charging credit of 3,000 kilowatt-hours per year on September 1 last year, which was reduced to 1,000 kilowatt-hours per year from August of this year.

The company said that the reduction in free charging credits was to ensure that the Xpeng supercharging system could provide better and more sustainable energy replenishment for customers as it continues to expand.

Unlike Xpeng, its local counterpart Nio has focused its efforts on building replenishment facilities primarily on its signature battery swap stations, although it is also building supercharging stations.

As of October 13, Nio had 535 battery swap stations and 382 supercharging stations offering 2,348 charging piles, according to CnEVPost data.

In addition, Nio has 542 destination charging stations offering 3,033 charging posts and access to more than 410,000 third-party charging piles.