After XNGP opened 243 cities across the country, at the Spring Festival kick-off meeting on January 30, He Xiaopeng defined 2024 as the "first year" of intelligent driving.
For Xpeng, one of the strong reasons to support this conclusion is that, as of now, the number of open cities for high-end intelligent driving in the city ranks first in the industry, the target of the number of open cities has been completed ahead of schedule, and the most important point is that it is fully open.
If the first year of intelligent driving is defined from the perspective of urban high-end intelligent driving, this assertion is also true for the industry.
Starting from 2022, players, including Huawei, Ideal and other players, will take high-end intelligent driving into the city as an indicator and set up a specific plan to open the city, not to mention that there will be a large number of chasers with this goal in the future. Sooner or later, 2024 is seen as a key year for a large-scale landing across the country.
There is no doubt that for now, Xpeng is actually the one at the forefront of the industry. Including Huawei, which claims to be far ahead, has not fulfilled its promise of "nationwide availability" for intelligent driving in urban areas in 2023.
It is also at such a juncture, on the occasion of the Lunar New Year, that Xpeng rarely pays tribute to friends (or opponents), and at the same time makes a summary of the past and the future planning of its intelligent driving research and development, landing, etc.
01
Xpeng Intelligent Driving, Past, Present and Future
For Xpeng, changing the way of future travel, specifically "autonomous driving", is a label and original intention from its inception to the present, even in the low tide of the industry around 2019, it has never given up and insisted on R&D investment.
Therefore, for the past, He Xiaopeng's speech started from many "firsts" in intelligent driving in the past.
In 2019, Xpeng achieved the industry's first full-scene parking
In 2019, shortly after the launch of Xpeng's first model, the G3, it realized full-scene intelligent parking through the fusion of visual perception and ultrasonic radar for the first time, and in the same year, it opened up intelligent driving functions including ICA intelligent cruise assist, ACC, LCC, and ALC.
On the 1024 Science and Technology Day in 2020, the engineering version of the high-speed NGP function was revealed to the outside world for the first time, and shortly thereafter, at the beginning of 2021, this function was mass-produced on Xpeng's second model, the P7, and brought the industry's first SR analog display that integrates high-precision maps (SR perception display has almost become the industry standard since then).
In June 2021, Xpeng's parking function ushered in another evolution, with the first mass-produced "last mile" VPA parking lot memory parking function that does not rely on parking lot transformation, and in the same year, the world's first mass-produced model equipped with LiDAR Xpeng P5 was launched.
In September 2022, Xpeng opened the industry's first mass-produced urban NGP on P5 and started a pilot in Guangzhou. Almost at the same time, players such as Huawei and Momo also announced the push of similar features.
2022 1024 Technology Day Xpeng XNGP release plan
That is, at the 1024 Science and Technology Day in 2022, Xpeng announced the general plan for the mass production of XNGP and the scope of Kaesong: in the first half of last year, the urban NGP functions of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Shanghai will be opened based on high-precision maps, and at the same time, the ability of non-high-precision maps will be gradually released, and by the second half of 2023, most cities without high-precision maps will open urban NGPs in most cities without high-precision maps in the country.
By April 2023, as the first model of Xpeng's Fuyao architecture, on the day of the launch of Xpeng G6, this plan is once again clear, with the release of XNGP's ability to not have high-precision maps, the speed of opening the city will be further accelerated, and it will land in 5 cities in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Foshan in the first half of the year, 50 cities in the second half of the year, and about 200 cities by 2024.
On the day of the G6 launch, Xpeng XNGP landed plan
Looking back now, the plan was basically implemented step by step and on time. In March last year, the first extreme capability of XNGP was opened, and Xpeng became the first player in China to mass-produce BEV+Transformer, and the city NGP opened to Shenzhen and Shanghai, and in June, it was the first to drive high-end intelligent vehicles into Beijing, and in November, the city NGP opened 25 cities, and expanded to 52 in December.
Until the beginning of January this year, He Xiaopeng announced the opening of 243 cities, becoming the first in the industry in this indicator.
Now, Xiaopeng is talking more about data, and there are two key points in this part, one is the internal R&D overview, and the other is the frequency of user use.
According to Xpeng, at present, the road test of intelligent driving vehicles has exceeded 3.7 million kilometers, which can achieve full-stack closed-loop data capabilities, and the closed-loop efficiency of data can be improved by 150%. Under this, the passive takeover data of the internal test city scenario dropped by 38%.
In terms of simulation, AI generation technology is applied to generate extreme scenarios on existing data to complete simulation training more effectively. At present, Xpeng's simulation mileage has exceeded 150 million kilometers.
As of the end of last year, the penetration rate of Xpeng users in high-speed scenarios was 94.7%, and the penetration rate of users in urban scenarios was 83.2%. XNGP has an average weekly user penetration rate of 71% and an average weekly mileage penetration rate of 40%.
The data is complicated, and the core information is that the acceptance of XNGP by Xpeng owners is already in a fairly high position.
Regarding the future, Xiaopeng is mainly based on the flag, and there are three key messages:
By 2024, it will achieve full coverage of the road network in major cities across the country, and at the same time, it will start to develop high-speed NGP for the world and XNGP for the global market by 2025.
XNGP's next steps
In terms of specific practices, the first is to reduce the takeover rate, and the number of passive takeovers per 1,000 kilometers in the core area of XNGP < 1 time, and the traffic efficiency of intelligent driving is infinitely close to that of manual driving.
At the technical level, the end-to-end large-scale model is fully on board, and the travel experience in the core area is benchmarked against Waymo's L4 autonomous driving.
02
Xpeng intelligent driving, really "do what you say"
After combing the timeline of Xpeng's intelligent driving, in terms of the landing rhythm of XNGP, Xiaopeng seems to be fully practicing its flag at every step, and even in the opening rhythm of XNGP, it is also realized according to the plan, and even overcompleted.
At present, in terms of the degree of completion after setting the goal of opening the city, Xiaopeng should be the only player who "does what he says".
How does Xpeng do it?
Previously, Wu Xinzhou, the former head of Xiaopeng Intelligent Driving, revealed in an interview with "Late Auto":
First of all, Xiaopeng "thinks most clearly" on the route of intelligent driving technology, "has not taken any detours, which is also the reason why we go faster." "Secondly, technology is only a part, and it also needs to rely on the team and system. The team is very good and strong, "all of them are more selfless people". In terms of system, "the iteration is very fast, there is a very rigorous system, to ensure that the iteration is orderly, there will be no inexplicable backlash or how, through continuous integration, simulation, road testing and so on, I think our accumulation in this area has been very good."
In an interview after last year's 1024 Science and Technology Day, He Xiaopeng also had some interpretations of why Xiaopeng was so "fast": "Because we have done a lot of 'knife sharpening' in the past, so we have done it from the bottom to the bottom and the foundation to the top."
He Xiaopeng was interviewed after the X9 press conference
This explanation can also be explained by the sudden acceleration of XNGP's opening of the city,PreviouslyX9In an interview after the listing,He Xiaopeng said,A lot of testing work has been done in the early stage in the cities that have been opened,So when doing generalization in the later stage,Many situations have actually been verified,So in 1 city (generalization) may be very slow,Later, 10 cities,Or two or three hundred cities may be very fast。
All kinds of information can be summarized as follows: In the know-how of intelligent driving, Xiaopeng has a sufficient foundation, and under the premise of laying a solid foundation, it is possible to quickly land the later no (high-precision) map and light radar scheme.
03
In the first year of intelligent driving, the collision began
He Xiaopeng defined 2024 as the "first year" of intelligent driving.
This definition can be understood in two ways:
First, Xpeng took the lead in starting high-end intelligent driving to run into major cities across the country on a large scale, and at the same time, intelligent driving has also achieved a high degree of recognition among Xpeng user groups;
Including Huawei, Ideal, etc., have previously put forward specific Kaicheng indicators.
Therefore, at this Spring Festival kick-off meeting, He Xiaopeng also paid tribute to the friends who have changed the travel experience for intelligent driving in the past 10 years since the beginning of the new force of self-made cars in 2014.
Xpeng pays tribute to friends and businessmen
Among them, there are NIO and Ideal with the same new power label, as well as traditional car companies such as BYD, Geely, and Great Wall, as well as big manufacturers such as Huawei, Baidu, and Xiaomi that have entered the industry with different attitudes, and of course, Tesla.
Looking back, this is a tribute, looking back, in the first year of intelligent driving defined by He Xiaopeng, as Xiaopeng took the lead in landing high-end intelligent driving nodes in major cities in China, this is also a year when high-end intelligent driving entered the city on a large scale, and all parties directly began to collide and accept market review at the experience level.
Everything is just like 3 years ago, after Xpeng landed high-end intelligent driving in high-speed scenes, follow-up players followed. Now that we look at it, high-speed NOA has become the standard configuration of leading players, and it has begun to be accepted by users, and car companies or third-party suppliers have tried and gradually realized low-cost solutions.
Therefore, can high-end intelligent driving in urban scenarios be "rolled" into the industry standard under the leadership of Xiaopeng?
The answer is about to be revealed.