On January 30, Chinese automaker Xpeng Motors hosted an event to unveil updates to its autonomous driving technology as the Lunar New Year approached. He Xiaopeng, chairman, and CEO of Xpeng, announced during the event that the company’s XNGP advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) has covered 596,000 kilometers across 243 cities in China, solidifying its position as the company with the most extensive self-driving coverage in the country.
In a statement released by Xpeng, the company added that the monthly active user penetration rate of its XNGP system has exceeded 85%, which it claimed is the first in the industry based on the number of active users, user experience, and mileage-based penetration rate.
He also emphasized the company’s decade-long commitment to smart driving advancements. “Even during the most challenging times, we never wavered in our focus on smart driving,” He remarked.
According to He, the combined headcount of Xpeng’s software and hardware teams dedicated to artificial intelligence R&D and data operations has surpassed 3,000 individuals, constituting nearly 40% of Xpeng’s total R&D personnel.
The effective coordination of this sizable team is crucial to ensuring the quality of Xpeng’s self-driving technology implementations. Safety has been earmarked as a core priority for Xpeng, with He noting that the company’s accident rate in self-driving scenarios is only one-tenth of that in manual driving. Despite this, He said that Xpeng remains committed to a rigorous simulation-based validation process for every modification to its technology, with each expected to undergo at least 16,000 scenario-based validations in a simulated environment. To date, Xpeng has accumulated over 150 million kilometers of simulated driving distance.
Despite its rigorous nature, the experience garnered over the past few years has bolstered Xpeng’s ability to deploy its technology swiftly in urban settings. “Our deployment speed has now increased by 384 times, requiring only 1–2 days for us to serve a new city,” He asserted.
In the coming year, Xpeng aims to achieve nationwide point-to-point coverage with its XNGP system in China, with a focus on cities in the west and east, including alleyways, internal roads, and parking lots. Additionally, the company plans to commence the development of a high-speed navigation guided pilot (NGP) system for global deployment, followed by the initiation of XNGP development globally in 2025.
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Beyond functionality, Xpeng is concentrating on enhancing user-friendliness in its smart driving features. He revealed that the passive takeover rate of the new-generation high-speed NGP is currently 0.5 times per 1,000 kilometers, with an average speed increase of 13% compared to the previous version. The city version of XNGP has undergone 271 iterations, addressing various issues at an average rate of 3.87 versions per day.
Looking ahead, Xpeng’s objective for the XNGP is to achieve a passive takeover rate of less than 1 time per 1,000 kilometers in core areas. The company also intends to implement end-to-end large models and streamline its general code to enhance the technology’s perception and control.
With the deployment of end-to-end large models, Xpeng aspires to rival Google’s Waymo, particularly in major Chinese cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.
KrASIA Connection features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Li Anqi for 36Kr.