Chinese electric vehicle (EV) company Xpeng, has officially unveiled the beta version of its NGP (Navigation Guided Pilot) highway autonomous driving solution.
The NGP was tested with over 100 journalists in road tests this week in Guangzhou, China, and said it plans to launch its NGP to its XPeng P7 customers in the country “in the next few weeks.”
You can check out a video below:
“So smooth, like a driver driving for you!” – veteran auto journalist Mark Andrews on #Xpeng NPG Beta version. P7 highway testing in Guangzhou today. More to come 😎#AutonomousDriving #ElectricVehicles #SmartEV pic.twitter.com/vFTsl8vFOq
— XPENG (@XPengMotors) January 13, 2021
How does Xpeng's NGP Beta Version handle China's unique road conditions? Veteran auto journalist Mark Andrews shares his experience.⚡️#AutonomousDriving #ElectricVehicles #SmartEV pic.twitter.com/ItskVwLnfT
— XPENG (@XPengMotors) January 15, 2021
“XPeng’s NGP highway navigation function conducts automatic navigation assisted driving from point A to B based on the navigation route set by the driver. Upon its launch, it will be implemented on the Premium version of the XPeng P7 with the XPILOT 3.0 system,” explained the company in a press release.
The company says the P7 utilizes 14 cameras, 5 millimeter-wave radars, 12 ultrasonic sensors, centimeter-level high-definition positioning, decimeter-level AutoNavi high-definition mapping, NVIDIA Xavier system-on-the-chip computing platform, and a Bosch iBooster brake system for its autonomous driving setup.
XPeng says NGP “solves HD-map positioning challenges for China’s highly complex road conditions, including areas with no GPS signals,” adding the system can “identify and avoid traffic cones, warn of difficult situations such as construction sites or road toll entrances, follow on automatically in traffic jams, avoid breakdown vehicles, change lanes to avoid emergencies, avoid large trucks, and warn drivers of when to resume manual control in dangerous situations such as adverse weather or road accidents.”
The company says its NGP autonomous highway solution is considered Level 3 autonomy, where cars can drive themselves only under ideal conditions, such as on a highway.
It’s worth noting, Tesla CEO Elon Musk acknowledged back in November XPeng has a stolen copy of the U.S. automaker’s Autopilot source code. “They have an old version of our software & don’t have our [neural network] inference computer,” said Musk, adding, “to be clear, this was just an XPeng problem. Other companies in China have not done this,” referring to the code theft.
XPeng is seen as a Tesla rival–and copy cat of sorts. The Chinese company’s website even emulated Tesla’s on web pages describing its XPILOT driving software.
The NGP highway solution will be launched for XPeng P7 customers in an over-the-air software update, before Chinese New Year in February.
