At a press conference the next day, Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng and President Brian Gu bristled with ambition, predicting the company would emerge as one of few survivors from China’s hypercompetitive EV industry by expanding globally and building in-house artificial-intelligence capabilities. The same is true of scores of other China EV makers, even as the sector leads a technological revolution that is upending the automotive industry globally. Only a handful make money, most notably BYD, China's biggest EV-and-hybrid producer and Tesla's leading rival.