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On July 22, Xiaopeng Motors announced that it had signed a strategic cooperation and joint development agreement on electronic and electrical architecture technology with Volkswagen Group. Both parties will devote all their efforts to developing industry-leading electronic and electrical architecture for Volkswagen's CMP and MEB platforms produced in China. The signing of the joint development agreement not only marks that the two parties will accelerate the development of electronic and electrical architecture in China, but also lays the foundation for expanding the scope of their strategic cooperation in electronic and electrical architecture technology.

In addition, under this joint development agreement, Xpeng Motors and Volkswagen Group will actively explore opportunities for further cooperation to expand the application scope of the jointly developed electronic and electrical architecture.

Currently, Xiaopeng Motors and Volkswagen Group have established a joint development project team in Guangzhou and Hefei. Through the technical cooperation of the joint development project team, the first model equipped with the electronic and electrical architecture jointly developed by the two parties is expected to be mass-produced in about 24 months.

Volkswagen Group said that this new electronic and electrical architecture (CEA architecture, China Electrial Architecture) was jointly developed by Volkswagen (China) Technology Co., Ltd. (VCTC), CARIAD China and Xiaopeng Motors; CARIAD China will play a key role in the project and integrate the latest generation of advanced autonomous driving assistance solutions and smart cockpit software functions into the new architecture research and development.

It is reported that compared with the current electronic and electrical architecture, the advantages of the CEA architecture are: three highly integrated regional controllers will replace a large number of electronic control units, and the number of single-vehicle control units will be reduced by 30%, which can significantly reduce the cost and complexity of the operating system, while improving computing performance and safety; thanks to the central computing platform and greater computing power, complex functions such as advanced autonomous driving assistance can be integrated into the architecture more quickly and conveniently.

"The CEA architecture is a comprehensive technical solution specially designed for the Chinese market and will be applied to Volkswagen's domestically produced pure electric models based on the CMP and MEB platforms. The use of the CEA architecture in Volkswagen's pure electric models will not only enhance the competitiveness of the Group's global electric vehicle platform in the Chinese market, but will also reduce technical complexity and optimize cost-effectiveness." said Daniel Bared, Managing Director of Volkswagen Group's China business and Chairman and CEO of Volkswagen Group (China). The cooperation with Xiaopeng to develop the CEA architecture is an important milestone in the development of the Group's "In China, for China" strategy. It is also a key step in Volkswagen's transformation into a leading manufacturer of smart connected electric vehicles.

An insider revealed to the First Financial reporter that Xiaopeng Motors has sent hundreds of engineers to participate in the CEA architecture project. Volkswagen has basically delegated power to Xiaopeng in this project.

In addition to the cooperation with Xiaopeng Motors, in late June, Volkswagen Group also announced plans to invest $5 billion in Rivian, a new American car-making force, and establish a joint venture to create the next-generation software-defined vehicle (SDV) platform for the two companies' future electric vehicles. Among them, software and electronic and electrical architecture are the top priorities of the cooperation between the two parties.

Currently, Volkswagen Group is still stuck in the "quagmire" of software code. Previously, Volkswagen launched a centralized electronic and electrical architecture called E3 on the MEB platform, which streamlined hundreds of ECUs on the vehicle to three high-computing units. However, due to the constraints of software capabilities, the MEB platform had a large number of bugs in the early stage, and the mass production and launch of its first product ID.3 was forced to be postponed many times.

Recently, it was reported that many electric vehicle projects of Volkswagen Group have been postponed again, including the ID.4 replacement model and Porsche's new electric SUV. The former will be delayed by 15 months and will not be available until 2029 at the earliest. The latter will not be available until 2031, a full three years later than originally planned. The reason for the delay in mass production of the above models is that the E3 2.0 software platform developed by Volkswagen's subsidiary CARIAD has encountered difficulties in production.