Here’s a NGP flawless drive in a Tier-3 city in China. XPeng’s NGP has expanded to 25 additional cities and 25 more next month, and has dropped HD-map use from its AI logic.
https://youtu.be/zO6QVluGmyg?si=uxrH8SVMqzz39_g7
For comparisons, here are latest videos from the tech giants Huawei and Baidu. Huawei’s HDmap-less drive demo was on protected highways of its primary city Shanghai. No indication yet if Huawei is capable to taking mapless to city streets.
https://youtu.be/9cZ66YKnehQ?si=qL9iEMBlvM8h7v5W
Baidu operates robotaxi with those giant lidars just like Waymo in US. However, without the large lidar or HDmap, its demo of its first EV is pretty bad. The route is an easy suburb one, nowhere near the most complex city center streets.
https://youtu.be/PEV_saqSsfw?si=xAHhOhjb1477rgMg
These two tech giants with tens of thousands of AI engineers are still struggling in a suburb of one city. XPeng’s NGP is available for users in 29 cities, soon 54.
Still don’t believe XPeng is the one champion? VW bought into XPeng for its tech. VW EVs designed by XPeng will be launched next year. Tesla’s FSD will be facing VWs with NGP in US in the near future. Didi, Uber of China, is partnering with XPeng too, guaranteeing 360k units sales of XPeng’s Mona EV models over two years to take 5% shares of XPEV. Why would a ridehail operator guarantee EV sales? Because they will purchase units themselves for robotaxi operations. Finally, NVDA is partnering with XPeng, designing vehicle AI chips just for XPeng, which has requested less powerful and expensive chips. XPeng’s software is so good that it can start to cut hardware costs. CEO of NVidia, Jensen, personally visited XPeng to receive head of NGP for a VP position in Nvidia. (Career move for immigrating to US.)
https://cnevpost.com/2023/08/28/xpeng-to-acquire-didi-ev-business-assets/
https://cnevpost.com/2023/08/24/wu-xinzhou-confirms-joining-nvidia-xpeng-expects-deeper-partnership/
maybe the tesla FSD need hurryup to enter chinese markets,and teach them something
Chinese city streets are like Queens on steroids. Tesla FSD is probably just going for protected highways which there are a lot of. FSD’s hardware is not enough.