Xpeng (NYSE: XPEV) completed a trip last March that ran between Guangzhou and Beijing, where a total distance of 3,675 km was covered, in which its electric cars equipped with the parking assistance system driving the Asian brand, have passed through six provinces of China.
The expedition used XPeng’s navigation-assisted autonomous driving system to make the trip between March 19 and March 26, 2021. During the test, the autonomous system was able to travel a total distance of 3,675 km, from the brand’s headquarters to the capital of China.
This trip has served to thoroughly test XPeng’s new autonomous driving assistance system, called Navigation Guided Pilot (NGP).
The electric car used was the Xpeng P7 Premium, equipped with XPILOT 3.0 that allows the NGP function. This challenge marks the longest test for an autonomous driving assistance function using production models in China.
The total distance of 3,675 km has consisted of drives of 3,145 km through motorways, where the key functionalities and reliability of the NGP, including automatic entry and exit of motorways, automatic change of roads and optimization of the options of the lane, automatic lane change, overtaking and speed limit adjustment.
All of these functions have been tested by the press and a group of testers. The objective was to verify the actual frequency of the human driver’s intervention and the success rate of the functions offered by the system developed by XPeng.
Over seven days, the P7 fleet has passed through ten Chinese cities in six provinces, starting in Guangzhou, to Shantou, Quanzhou, Wenzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing, Qingdao, Jinan, ending in Beijing.
The team of media professionals and external experts have selected different routes, based on your preferences, to cover a wide range of driving scenarios.
NGP provides navigation-assisted autonomous driving from point A to B, based on the driver’s navigation route, and is available on high-precision map-covered roads in China.
Since the launch of the NGP on January 26 this year, XPeng P7 users in China have driven more than 1 million km under the NGP.
After completing the route, more than 3,600 kilometers have been completed in total, where the lane changes and overtaking have achieved a degree of success of 94.41%.
The autonomous system was able to carry out the crossings and mergers in the highways autonomously in 92.76% of the cases, and even the passages through tunnels had a success rate of 94.95%.
The drivers participating in this test intervened in the vehicles, on average, 0.71 times per 100 kilometers.
These figures are a record in the Asian country, opening the debate and rekindling the challenge and tensions between XPeng and Tesla. According to the Palo Alto brand’s accusations, two brands have had their positives and negatives due to allegations of alleged theft and copies of Tesla’s Autopilot system software by the Chinese company.
The demonstration takes place while the 100% autonomous journey of a Tesla between the East Coast and the West Coast of the United States of America, promised by Elon Musk years ago, is yet to come.
XPeng wants to be a leader in autonomous driving. After the experience and launch of the driving assistance system, He Xiaopeng himself, XPeng’s president and CEO, wanted to congratulate himself on the expedition’s success.
“The results show that our NPG is not only the most powerful autonomous driving system but also the easiest to use for production vehicles currently available on the market.” Xiaopeng has stated.
The CEO does not hide the company’s autonomous driving ambitions by stating that: “We want to become the world’s leading provider of autonomous driving hardware and software.”