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It's too bad to be useful.”

Author: Wang Lei

Editor: Qin Zhangyong

No longer concerned with human relationships and worldly wisdom, He Xiaopeng began to reflect on the current state of domestic competition.

"We used to do things first and talk about them later, but now it's different. We think about it first, then talk about it, and then do it."

“The United States is competing for end-to-end technology, only China is on the weekly sales charts。”

“This is not what a technological competition should look like.”

Not long ago, He Xiaopeng went to the United States to study, experienced Tesla FSD and Waymo, and felt the fierce competition in Silicon Valley.

Being on the other side of the ocean, he felt firsthand the intensity of the technological competition in the United States. He saw that they were all focusing on how to improve end-to-end smart driving solutions. In contrast, in China, they were only thinking about how to make money rather than technological innovation and breakthroughs.

So he asked two soul-searching questions:

What happened to Chinese venture capital?

What are our technology companies doing?

With these preparations, he is more certain about what Xiaopeng should and wants to do. At last night's technology launch conference, Xiaopeng Motors laid out a lot of cards.

01

From "end-to-end" to "door-to-door"

Previous promotional materials hinted that Xpeng's Robotaxi would be coming soon, but this information did not appear at this press conference.

Interestingly, on the eve of the press conference, He Xiaopeng posted a Weibo post saying that when he was reviewing the materials at the press conference, he foundThree or four pages of content on the PPT were deletedHe Xiaopeng said that the team hopes that some information will not be disclosed too early.

We might as well guess that the deleted content is most likely information about Xiaopeng Robotaxi. After all, in the promotional posters released by Xiaopeng Motors before, it was clearly mentioned "When will my G6 be able to go out and earn money by itself while I am at work?"

Moreover, He Xiaopeng also clearly mentioned in his previous Weibo that information about Xiaopeng Robotaxi will be shared at this press conference and the Xiaopeng Technology Day on October 24 soon.

It is a bit regrettable that the hint was so obvious but it did not appear. After all, two days ago, Li Bin clearly stated that the Robotaxi business would not be big. Now that Xiaopeng started to talk about Robotaxi, it was bound to attract a large number of people.

However, even without Robotaxi, this press conference was still full of useful information.

It is really “available nationwide”

First of all, Xiaopeng Motors' XNGP has been fully upgraded from "available nationwide" to "Good for all over the country”。

No restrictions on cities, routes or road conditionsThese are the three standards that He Xiaopeng believes make smart driving "easy to use across the country" at the Xiaopeng Motors AI Intelligent Driving Technology Launch Conference.

What does “useful across the country” mean?

He Xiaopeng said that although everyone in the industry is saying that it can be opened nationwide, there are still differences, such as "Black and white list", the so-called "nationwide drivability" of the whitelist type is only for some roads and some users. Many car companies actually use this method to advertise that "nationwide drivability" is only open to some whitelist roads in the city, or only recruit some whitelist users who meet certain thresholds to open.

He also said that some car companies' intelligent driving DEMOs look good, "but if you let them run across the country, it will be completely different."

The other type is the "blacklist type" which can be used throughout the country. Except for some specific scenarios, it can be used on all roads in the country.

He Xiaopeng also admitted that Xiaopeng Motors had also experienced this model, but now it is different. It can truly achieve unlimited routes, exceptExcept for some special sections in the blacklist(such as confidential areas, etc.), all other roads in the country can be opened and are open to all users.

It took Xiaopeng Motors nearly 20 months just to meet the first criterion of "not limited to any city". In fact, Xiaopeng XNGP Intelligent Driving had already achieved "ability to drive across the country" half a year ago, but it has only now been officially launched in full.

In order to realize XNGP without city restrictions, Xiaopeng Motors claims to be the first in China to travel all over the country.2595Cities, Experience756Car companies that conduct 10,000-kilometer real-vehicle testing.

It is worth mentioning that the Super Electric Laboratory specifically checked the national highway mileage at the end of 2023 announced by the Ministry of Transport of China, which is5.4368 million km, an increase of 82,000 kilometers from the end of 2022.

The 7.56 million kilometers of actual vehicle testing mentioned by He Xiaopeng means that almost one-third of the roads have been repeatedly verified, or have required repeated testing due to road construction, route changes, etc. Judging from this data, the coverage is indeed very high.

Unlimited cities and routes are easy to understand, but unlimited road conditions means that XNGP can adapt to complex road conditions including U-turns, roundabouts and narrow roads, making it the firstComprehensive coverage of complex road conditionsAI smart driving.

In the past, intelligent driving assistance systems based on rule codes could only "pre-adapt" to complex scenarios such as roundabouts and U-turns by having engineers write a large number of corresponding rule codes, and the pass rate was extremely low.

He Xiaopeng also gave an example, "It's easy to ask a three-year-old to grab things, but it's hard to ask him to count the number three, because there are many more things that need to be mobilized."

Based on the end-to-end large model that has been put into mass production, XNGP has the ability to learn by brain, and can realize "driving while watching".Roundabout, U-turnScenarios can be responded to in real time.

However, in He Xiaopeng's opinion, it is far from enough to do everything on public roads.The ultimate version of unlimited routesIt is the internal road of the park, and it proposes a new concept "Door to Door”。

The so-called "door-to-door" means opening up the roads within the park. It can be understood that you can turn on the assisted driving when you get in the car in the future, without having to wait until you get out of the gate and onto the main road.

And gave a deadline: expected toFourth quarter of 2024XNGP will open up smart driving “breakpoints” including ETC toll stations, parking lot gates, and internal roads in the park to achieve a true “door-to-door” experience.

In his opinion, end-to-end means door-to-door.

Based on this, He Xiaopeng believes that the turning point of intelligent driving has arrived in 2024. He believes that intelligent driving has four major stages, and Xiaopeng Motors is already inThe third of the four stages of intelligent drivingIn addition to parks, gates, and ETC, other urban public roads and complex road conditions can be opened, and it has begun to move towards the fourth stage, which is to open up internal roads.

He Xiaopeng also believes that most of his competitors are still in the first or second stage.

All in AI

He Xiaopeng interpreted the predictions for the development of AI at the press conference. He said that the power of AI will promote the development of four major trends:Chips, large models, driverless cars and robots, starting from 2025, AI will completely eliminate algorithms at the software level.

To this end, Xiaopeng Motors has invested in AI training.3.5 billionCosts include computing power and labor, which is difficult for most companies to do. Xiaopeng also released its latest AI computing power reserve data to date:2.51 EFLOPS。

End-to-end is its most powerful tool for AI smart driving. The first mass-produced end-to-end smart driving model in China, the neural network XNet + the regulation and control model XPlanner + the large language model XBrain, was installed in cars a few months ago, becoming the world's firstOnly twoAutomakers that have achieved end-to-end large-scale model mass production.

He said that with the support of end-to-end, XNGP has stronger learning ability and can handle more complex road conditions, which is difficult to achieve in the era of rules. With the increase of data learning, XNGP's capabilities will continue to improve, and intelligent driving that does not use large models will be eliminated.

With end-to-end support, the improvement of major version capabilities is constantly being refreshed, and the time has been gradually reduced from 13 months. By the end of this year, Xiaopeng will be able to automatically pass through ETC and open up internal roads in the park. This means that it only takes 5 months for XNGP to achieve a leap in intelligent driving capabilities.

Not only that, XNGP has a version iteration every 2 days, an experience upgrade every 2 weeks, 5 full updates and 35 iterative versions in 70 days. This iteration speed has surpassed the mobile phone industry.

Moreover, with the end-to-end big model capability, Xiaopeng OTA has begun to be launched overseas. He Xiaopeng mentioned that Xiaopeng Motors may be the company that pushes the most OTA versions overseas most frequently among all new energy vehicles.

After this press conference, XOS 5.2.0 will be pushed globally, and the push to China and overseas regions will be carried out simultaneously. It will be officially pushed in China on July 30, and on August 15 in 10 countries including Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and France.

Finally, it was also said that the cooperation between Xiaopeng and Volkswagen continued to deepen, and the first model based on the jointly developed electronic and electrical architecture is expected toWithin 24 monthsMass production has been launched.

02

Opened up the Apple ecosystem

At this conference, the new AI Dimensity XOS 5.2.0 system was also released, which also filled up Xiaopeng'sEcological interconnection and smart cockpitTechnology tree.

In addition to the intelligent driving that is truly "easy to drive all over the country", there are eight core function updates, a total of 484 function upgrades and additions, including: 100-meter tracking reversing, parking 2.0, remote voice control, gesture control, Apple NFC control, new instruments, new driving modes, etc.

In terms of intelligent driving, not only is XNGP fully upgraded, but also a newCamera sensing when leaving or parking"Function and support up to 100 metersTracking reverseFunction.

The camera senses the vehicle leaving and parking, which is an upgraded version of the "vehicle leaving and parking" function previously released by Xiaopeng at the 520 AI DAY.

After the owner gets out of the car and closes all the doors, he can cover the side rear camera on either the left or right fender to trigger the parking process. The reason for this design is that people can start the subsequent process of leaving the car and parking after closing the car door and taking out the luggage from the trunk.

The official also revealed the next version, which will allow panoramic images to be viewed on the mobile app and the automatic parking process to be monitored.

In non-intelligent driving scenarios, the new version also adds functions such as road merging reminders, merging into the main road reminders, intelligent speeding reminders, and electronic eye information reminders.

Track-following reverse, as the name suggests, will automatically return along the original driving track when encountering a dead end, narrow road or other extreme scenarios where you cannot turn around, achieving "one-click return to the original position". This function is actually common, but it is relatively rare to support a distance of 100 meters.

In terms of smart cockpit, the biggest highlight is that after Xiaomi, Xiaopeng Motors alsoOpened up the Apple ecosystem, it’s not just about using Carplay, it also supports Siri controlling the car.

Such as car wash mode, rapid cooling, and Sentry mode.Call SiriUsing gestures on Apple Watch and iPhoneNFCIt can also perform operations such as opening doors, opening charging ports, turning on sentry mode, and turning on extreme cooling.

In addition, there is an Apple mobile phone smart island to display vehicle status, wired screen projection, expanded remote vehicle monitoring image area, lighting and voice interaction functions, automatic power-off strategy, etc.

In addition, the dashboard interface has also been upgraded, with 80 custom instrument styles. In addition, the instrument supports the display of large maps, and navigation and cruise status information can be seen from the instrument, and new page cards for related information such as speed, driving mode, and automatic driving assistance status have been added.

In addition to the new major features, there are also optimized driver status monitoring functions, driver mode for two-wheel drive models, and support for 1/3 split screen of the browser.

Yu Tong, head of Xpeng Motors' intelligent experience, also said that although 5.2.0 covers a total of 484 update items, they do not want it to be called "6.0" because each subsequent minor version will have such a large-scale update.

As Xiaopeng He said, 2024 is a critical year, and Xiaopeng Motors happens to be at the right time.The next 10 yearsAt the crossroads of the world, we have also had new thoughts on AI and intelligent driving.

After this press conference, Xiaopeng's AI and intelligent driving labels became more obvious.