Xiaopeng set up an autonomous driving company, which is to personally engage in Robotaxi?
Just today, we found from the enterprise inspection website that Guangzhou Pengxu Autonomous Driving Technology Co., Ltd. was established on February 14, 2022, and the legal representative of the company is Xia Heng, co-founder and president of Xiaopeng Automobile, with a registered capital of 10 million yuan and 100% controlled by Guangdong Xiaopeng Automobile Technology Co., Ltd.
▲ Screenshot
Previously, He Xiaopeng, CEO of Xiaopeng Motors, also publicly stated that Xiaopeng Motors will carry out Robotaxi business in 2022 to accelerate the commercialization of Xiaopeng's intelligent driving technology.
Therefore, the establishment of the new company and He Xiaopeng's previous remarks can't help but make people think that perhaps Xiaopeng Automobile established an autonomous driving company to develop and implement L4-level automatic driving technologies such as Robotaxi.
For Xiaopeng Motors, the data collected through the full-scenario intelligent assisted driving (L2 level autonomous driving) on the mass production car can help its Robotaxi algorithm to continue to iterate, and Robotaxi's algorithm can also be delegated to the mass production car to help the latter gradually achieve "evolution" from L2 to L4.
Therefore, for Xiaopeng Motors, at present, it has both a mature mass production line and a large number of high-speed, urban NGP research and development capabilities and data accumulation, and it is understandable to go down to the automatic driving track at this time.
First, the CEO said that he would make robotaxi's first stop in Guangzhou
The first thing Xiaopeng Automobile did to set up an autonomous driving company may be to directly enter the Robotaxi market.
At the 2021 Q3 Xiaopeng Automobile earnings conference call, He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xiaopeng Automobile, said that Xiaopeng Automobile will launch the Robotaxi business in the second half of 2022 and will first be trial-run in Guangzhou, and at the beginning of the operation, the vehicle will first use the XPILOT3.5 system and gradually transition to the XPILOT4.0 system.
▲ He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Automobile
The registration place of Guangzhou Pengxu Autonomous Driving Technology Co., Ltd. is Huangpu District, Guangzhou, which is the "holy land" for the commercialization of Robotaxi in China.
The Robotaxi business of well-known domestic autonomous driving companies such as Baidu Apollo and Wenyuan Zhixing has chosen to land in Huangpu District, Guangzhou, and the base camp of Xiaopeng Automobile is also located in Guangdong Province, so Guangzhou will become one of the preferred locations for Xiaopeng Automobile to land robotaxi.
He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xiaopeng Motors, said that because Xiaopeng's Robotaxi will use its own mass production car, Xiaopeng can have more advantages in terms of cost compared to the Robotaxi business of Xiaoma Zhixing and Baidu. In addition, He Xiaopeng also said that the monthly test mileage of each vehicle in Xiaopeng's Robotaxi business will be about 8,000 to 10,000 kilometers.
Second, L2 is in the leading position and will complement L4
Previously, Xiaopeng Automobile has always regarded L2 level automatic driving as one of the core competitiveness of its mass production vehicles.
Last year, Xiaopeng Automobile launched the XPILOT3.0 system, which realized L2 level automatic driving in high-speed scenarios, that is, high-speed NGP. The data shows that the average number of takeovers per 100 kilometers of Xiaopeng Expressway NGP is 0.71 times, the success rate of lane change and overtaking is 94.41%, the success rate of ramp passing is 92.76%, and the success rate of tunnel passing is 94.95%, and the data are in a relatively excellent position.
At the functional level, Xiaopeng's set of high-speed NGP functions also has automatic speed limit adjustment, automatic switching of highways, optimal lane selection, automatic up and down ramps, automatic overtaking and other functions, which can greatly reduce the pressure on drivers when driving at high speeds.
Overall, Xiaopeng's set of high-speed NGP functions has been ahead of Weilai and ideal similar functions, and has been on par with Tesla.
▲ Xiaopeng P7 turns on high-speed NGP function
After successively implementing functions such as high-speed NGP and memory parking, Xiaopeng Automobile also set its sights on L2 level automatic driving in urban scenarios, which is the application scenario closest to Robotaxi.
In October last year, The car also experienced the full-scene L2 demo version of Xiaopeng Automobile in advance. This demo version can realize multiple functions such as VPA parking memory parking, high-speed NGP, and urban NGP, and covers different application scenarios such as parking lots, high-speed, and urban roads.
In the actual experience, after the vehicle enters the city road, the vehicle is still driving by itself, can always drive stably in its own lane, and will automatically turn when it encounters a situation where it wants to change lanes, and then complete the lane change under the condition of ensuring safety.
The vehicle can also identify the road conditions in front of it in time, and will display the traffic light information and monitoring information in front of it on the central control screen, so as to walk in full accordance with the traffic rules.
▲ Traffic light information can be seen on the vehicle central control screen
And some complex road conditions of the vehicle can also be smoothly passed. In the process of the test ride of the car, after passing through the Guangzhou Service Trade City, there are many small trailers filled with large bags on the road.
In general, in the actual experience process, the driving experience of Xiaopeng Automobile's full-scene L2 is very close to the experience of riding Robotaxi, and the difference between the two in the future is also whether the identity of the people in the car is the driver or the passenger.
Compared with other autonomous driving companies, Xiaopeng Automobile has chosen to develop L2 level automatic driving technology for mass production vehicles first, and through the large amount of actual road and vehicle data generated by users using this function, it will continue to feed back and promote the iterative update of L4 level automatic driving technologies such as Robotaxi; and L4 level automatic driving technology will also be gradually decentralized to its own mass production vehicles to achieve a virtuous cycle of developing automatic driving technology.
Xiaopeng Motors said that it is expected that by the first half of 2023, Xiaopeng Motors will achieve full-scene L2 level automatic driving, which is similar to the time when He Xiaopeng said that the scale of Robotaxi landed. At that time, Xiaopeng Motors will have both a production vehicle with L2 autonomous driving and a large-scale Robotaxi operation fleet with L4 autonomous driving.