"Stinky technology".
For this slightly self-deprecating label, Xiaopeng has gone through a process from helplessness to calm acceptance, this process is actually the process of Xiaopeng's technical ability being recognized by the "public", and the "public" here is actually a pun meaning, one is the general public, which is the majority of ordinary people of all kinds; The second is Volkswagen, the world's second-largest auto giant in terms of sales last year, which is a direct competitor of Xpeng and a shareholder and partner of Xpeng.
When Xiaopeng printed "stinky (real) technology" on the company's cultural shirt, it was also the time when Xiaopeng and Volkswagen signed an equity investment agreement to start strategic cooperation.
Therefore, "technology" has become the key point and intersection of this cooperation.
▲ Xpeng and Volkswagen executives gathered at the Xpeng booth at the Beijing Auto Show
"Big and small cooperation" is a three-step process, each taking what he needs
Since July last year, Xpeng and Volkswagen have signed three cooperation agreements intensively:
On July 27, 2023, Volkswagen Group entered into a share purchase agreement for a strategic minority investment in Xpeng Motors, whereby Xpeng Motors will issue approximately 4.99% of Class A common shares to Volkswagen Group at a price of $15 per ADS(*), for a total value of approximately $700 million.
Xpeng and Volkswagen Group will jointly develop two B-segment electric vehicle models based on their respective core competencies and Xpeng's G9 model platform, intelligent cockpit and advanced driver assistance system software, which will be sold under the Volkswagen brand in the Chinese market. Production of the model is expected to begin in 2026.
In addition, the two companies will explore other potential strategic collaborations in a number of areas, including future EV platforms, software technologies, and supply chains.
On February 29, 2024, Xpeng Motors and Volkswagen Group signed a joint development agreement for strategic technology cooperation in platform and software. By combining the scale advantages of both companies and leveraging the Volkswagen Group's world-class supply chain capabilities, the joint procurement program aims to jointly reduce platform costs, leverage the synergies of the strategic partnership, and enhance the product competitiveness of the B-segment electric models jointly developed by the two companies.
On April 17, 2024, Xpeng and Volkswagen Group signed an EEA E/E architecture technology strategic cooperation framework agreement, under which the two parties will jointly develop and integrate the latest generation of Xpeng Motors' E/E architecture into Volkswagen's CMP platform in China, which is expected to be applied to Volkswagen-branded electric models produced in China from 2026.
It can be seen that the project focus of the three cooperation agreements is capital and equity, supply chain and procurement, as well as specific technical architecture, showing an increasingly in-depth trend.
▲ At the Beijing Auto Show, the booths of Volkswagen and Xpeng were set up next to each other
Let's take a closer look at the details of this collaboration, which was announced on the eve of the Beijing Auto Show:
Xpeng's industry-leading E/E architecture is the core technology of its vertically integrated hardware and software technology. Thanks to this advanced electronic and electrical architecture, software such as intelligent driver assistance software and Internet of Vehicles operating system can be decoupled from the underlying hardware and vehicle platform to achieve rapid software iteration across platforms.
Xpeng's latest-generation E/E architecture uses an architecture based on central computing and domain controllers, providing a high-performance in-vehicle computing environment with a competitive cost structure. The E/E architecture supports high-speed data transmission over Gigabit Ethernet between the central domain and the driver assistance domain controller. Due to the large number of electronic control units integrated in the domain controller, a highly integrated architecture and a competitive cost structure are achieved.
The E/E architecture also supports efficient vehicle OTA, providing high-speed OTA for end-user vehicles and off-line vehicles, and reducing the time to complete each OTA to less than 30 minutes.
何小鹏表示:
The common pursuit of technological innovation has brought Xpeng and Volkswagen together. Both parties will continue to contribute to our strategic partnership. This strategic partnership, based on our industry-leading E/E architecture technology, takes our strategic partnership to the next level and is based on a larger strategic collaboration. The cooperation will make both of our smart electric vehicle products highly competitive in terms of technology and cost.
For Volkswagen, under the strategy of "In China, For China", the cooperation with Xpeng can make the German car company more suitable for the needs of users in the Chinese market, maintain the pace of technology development, and ensure the competitiveness of its products. After all, the Chinese market is the world's most volatile new energy market, and there is no one.
In fact, we can think that this cooperation is a cooperation between "fist is afraid of young strength" and "ginger is old and spicy", Xpeng output technology to help Volkswagen better new energy transformation in China, Volkswagen can rely on the huge volume and supply chain and production management efficiency advantages to help Xpeng reduce costs and increase efficiency.
We can also look at this matter from this perspective, it is a typical case under the general trend of technology export from China's new energy vehicle companies to traditional automobile powers, and it is also the only way for Chinese new energy vehicle companies to build their own technical labels, and it is also a node event for China's new energy vehicle companies to drive the transformation of the global automotive industry.
The advantages of Volkswagen, a century-old car company, are clear at a glance, so what is the specific technical bargaining chip of Xiaopeng, as a new force in car manufacturing?
EEA – another technology label that Xpeng wants to create
For Xpeng, the most well-known technology label is XNGP (Xiaopeng Navigation Guided Pilot).
As a leading intelligent assisted driving service with both technical progress bar and coverage progress bar, Xpeng Motors has pushed unlimited XNGP intelligent assisted driving functions to users with intelligent driving experience, which is not limited to cities and routes, and can be used wherever there is navigation, and will also achieve nationwide coverage this year, and will start developing high-speed NGP for the world within this year and XNGP for the world next year.
In fact, this round of new energy transformation has also contributed to the popularization of many technical concepts, such as the acceptance and attention to intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit technology is accelerating, and the more in-depth EEA (Electrical/Electronic Architecture, electronic and electrical architecture) is also being paid attention to.
The difference in the EEA also reflects to a large extent whether the automotive technology is advanced or not.
For example, Xpeng's current electronic and electrical architecture is EEA 3.5, which has gone through several major iterations of technology, from the industry's mainstream level to the industry's leading level. Xpeng's first car, the G3, uses the traditional distributed E/E architecture, EEA 1.0.
The intelligence and networking of automobiles have led to more and more electronic control units (ECUs) in automobiles, ranging from traditional engine control systems, airbags, anti-lock braking systems, electric power steering, and body electronic stability systems; to intelligent meters, entertainment audio-visual systems, and assisted driving systems; There's also electric drive control, battery management systems, on-board charging systems on electric vehicles, as well as booming on-board gateways, T-BOX, and autonomous driving systems, to name a few.
The electronic and electrical architecture of traditional automobiles is mostly distributed, and one more function or module may have one more electronic control unit (ECU), and the final number of electronic control units (ECUs) may reach hundreds, and then through CAN (Controller Area Network, a high-speed and stable serial communication protocol) and LIN (Local Interconnect Network, a low-speed, low-cost serial communication protocol) buses are connected together.
With the increasing number of ECUs, the electronic and electrical architecture of the entire vehicle is becoming more and more complex and unstable, and the disadvantages are gradually emerging:
The computing power is scattered and cannot be used efficiently, and the computing power of each controller chip has redundancy, but it is independent and inefficient
The cost and weight disadvantage of wiring harness, more ECU means more wiring harness, even up to 2km long, 20-30 kg weight
Unable to support high-bandwidth in-vehicle communication: the bus is under heavy load, which is prone to signal loss and bus congestion
Difficulty in system integration and OTA maintenance: The development of each ECU is mainly provided to the OEM by each Tier1, and the OEM is integrated by the internal team, which is difficult to upgrade online in the later stage.
Therefore, in order to solve many problems of distributed electronic and electrical architecture, many car companies have begun to improve the architecture and enter the architecture based on functional domain controllers. Taking Xpeng as an example, the Xpeng P7 has taken a big leap forward in the electronic and electrical architecture, entering the EEA 2.0 era, realizing vehicle-level OTA and 100 Gigabit Ethernet communication.
The so-called architecture based on functional domain controllers is to integrate the functions of ECUs with similar functions but scattered into a hardware platform that is stronger than a single ECU, which is called a "domain control unit" (DCU).
Platformization, high integration, high performance and good compatibility, as well as rich hardware interface resources and powerful software features, enable the domain controller to be unique and multi-faceted, simplify the electronic and electrical architecture, and reduce the development and manufacturing costs.
一般而言,域控制器主要有五种:动力域(Power Train)、底盘域(Chassis)、车身域(Body/Comfort)、座舱域(Cockpit/Infotainment)、自动驾驶域(ADAS)。
也有汽车企业会进一步集中域控制器，整合成「车控域控制器（VDC，Vehicle Domain Controller）、智能驾驶域控制器（ADC，ADAS\AD Domain Controller）、智能座舱域控制器（CDC，Cockpit Domain Controller）」的三域架构。
For example, the Xpeng G9 goes one step further than the Xpeng P7 and adopts the EEA 3.0 architecture to achieve the architecture of "central supercomputing + regional control".
Xpeng's "central supercomputing + regional control" architecture is currently in the EEA 3.5 era, and it is at the industry-leading level in terms of integration, data technology platform, and hierarchical software platform.
The generational change from 1.0 to 3.5 can be understood as the electronic and electrical architecture of the car has changed from the ant colony mode to the wolf pack mode, and then evolved into the lion tiger led by the wolf pack of wolves, and the combat effectiveness has been jumped again and again.
Because of the leading level of integration, the hardware cost can be greatly reduced, so as to achieve better functional realization on lower-priced products, coupled with the joint procurement cooperation agreement between Xpeng and Volkswagen, as well as the platform cooperation agreement, the cost advantage will be more obvious.
In the latest EEA architecture, Xpeng uses a hierarchical management software platform to shorten the iteration cycle of intelligent functions by 50%, and the after-sales intelligent diagnosis of this architecture is also at the leading level in China, realizing the prediction and diagnosis of problems before users arrive at the store. Moreover, the architecture also supports the precise power distribution of the vehicle's electrical devices, so as to achieve scene power supply, and greatly optimize the power consumption of the vehicle, unlike traditional cars that need to power on the whole vehicle with any function.
In addition, EEA 3.5 now supports Gigabit Ethernet high-speed data transmission between the central domain and the driver assistance domain controller, enabling each OTA to be completed in less than 30 minutes, compared to the previous low-speed communication between electronic control units.
For example, Xpeng's AI Dimensity system, which debuted at the Beijing Auto Show, fully applies AI technology to the operating system of intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving. Based on the in-depth application of AI large models, Xpeng's life assistant, AI P, will have a higher level of understanding and can accurately predict, communicate smoothly and accurately execute user needs through personalized combinations of more than 100 cockpit functions.
This system will be fully pushed to all Pro and Max versions of Xpeng X9, G6, G9, and P7i in OTA on the 20th of this month.
It can be said that the AI Dimensity system can be used in the car without the support of the EEA's advanced architecture.
Speaking of Volkswagen's CMP platform, its full name is China Main Platform, which will use a higher proportion of localized technology and localized components to reduce costs and improve efficiency, while the full name of CEA above this is China Electrical Architecture, CEA will be jointly developed by Xpeng Motors, Volkswagen (China) Technology Co., Ltd. (VCTC) and Volkswagen Group software company CARIAD China.
In short, it is Xpeng's electronic and electrical architecture technology, which is a special version for the public.
In other words, 99% of the time in all kinds of cooperation, it is a matter of making up for what is lacking and taking what you need.
Interestingly, at the Volkswagen Group Night on the eve of the Beijing Auto Show, Xpeng described "big and small cooperation" as follows: "The road is simple, and complex problems are simplified by complementing each other's strengths.
This is actually somewhat similar to the evolution of the EEA, from distributed, to domain centralized, and then to "central supercomputing + regional control", in fact, it is a step by step simplification.
Of course, we can also find more circumstantial evidence of the deepening of "big and small cooperation", such as during the Beijing Auto Show, the booths of Volkswagen and Xpeng were set up next to each other, Volkswagen CEO Braid visited the Xpeng booth, and He Xiaopeng posted a photo of the two sides on Weibo.
The more frequent this kind of action in front of the stage, in fact, it also proves that Xpeng's technical capabilities are gradually evolving, and its EEA technology is moving from behind the scenes to the front of the stage, which is becoming another "technical label" for Xpeng after XNGP.
The more such labels, the more "stinky technology" is no longer self-deprecation, but a positive description of Xiaopeng by the outside world.