The core technical team frequently “changed blood”, betting on end-to-end large models, wrestling with Tesla FSD and fully pushing the new version of Xiaopeng XNGP.
Xiaopeng, which has lagged behind in sales in the new power brand, is sparing no effort to win the battle of smart driving.
The new version of XNGP, which Xiaopeng has been building momentum for a long time, finally ushered in a full push in July.
On July 4th, Xiaopeng announced that the public test version of Xiaopeng XNGP XOS 5.2.0 has been launched.
According to reports, Xiaopeng’s new version of “Infinite XNGP” adopts blacklist mode, which can be used in the whole country and can be opened if there is a road.
At a time when a large number of car companies are making every effort to promote the upgrading of smart cars, “all over the country can drive” has become the propaganda label of many brands.
However, Li Liyun, the person in charge of Xiaopeng auto driving, said bluntly a few days ago that, as the industry says, “the whole country can drive.
” people in the non-intelligent driving industry are often misled.
It has two development paths: one is that “white list” can be opened all over the country, which is only open to part of the whitelist roads in the city, or only recruit some whitelist users who meet a certain threshold to open.
Another kind of “black list” can be opened all over the country, except for some specific scenes (such as secret areas, etc.
), all roads in the country can be opened, and are open to all users.
Obviously, this remark has a great meaning of “pseudo-XNGP” in the comment industry, and it is not difficult to see that Xiaopeng repeatedly stressed that the “unlimited wisdom”, which can be opened all over the country, is one of the weights for him to face the second half of the intelligent driving competition.
And in order to win the final of smart driving, Xiaopeng’s recent actions are more than that.
Photo source: Xiaopeng car Weibo screenshot, to win the smart car, get a “sharp knife”, from “price war” to “traffic war”, the industry is rapidly changing, directly pushing the car circle boss to the front of the flow stage.
Xiaopeng executives are also increasingly making “public appearances” on social media to promote their smart cars.
In terms of the momentum before the launch of Xiaopeng’s new version of XNGP, Li Liyun, the person in charge of Xiaopeng’s autopilot, repeatedly compared it with the industry “catfish” Tesla FSD, and went to the center of hot discussion again and again.
For example, on June 27th, Li Liyun threw out the topic that “it is very difficult for FSD to handle the 300 million small electric donkeys in China”, saying bluntly that the road conditions in China are much more complicated than those in the United States, and that FSD will face the difficulties of playing games with non-motor vehicles such as motorcycles, and that Xiaopeng XNGP has rich experience in dealing with this area.
In this way, it is obvious that Xiaopeng XNGP understands the meaning of the Chinese market better than Tesla.
Similarly, there is he Xiaopeng who keeps coming out.
During his business trip to the United States in late June, he Xiaopeng not only experienced FSD V12.3.6 and Waymo, lamented that FSD had made great progress in a few months, but also talked to Musk, saying that if he came to China, Xiaopeng would be happy to provide a test drive of the XNGP ADAS.
In addition, he also said, “I believe that 2025 will be a fully self-driving ChatGPT moment!” He Xiaopeng said that on the whole, he believes that the top car companies in 2025 will enter the era of AI smart driving ChatGPT, and accelerate to completely get rid of the self-driving ability of the current rule mode, and some scenes will be self-driving in 2026.
Source: he Xiaopeng Weibo, in February 2024, Tesla launched an end-to-end FSD with version number V12.1.2 Beta to users in the United States.
Since then, the industry has shown great enthusiasm for end-to-end self-driving solutions.
Xiaopeng, Xiaomi, Ulai, ideal and so on have all become the representatives of automobile companies with open-book “end-to-end” technology.
For Xiaopeng, it has always played the role of “technical man” in China’s electric car market, and has always adhered to the core brand label of “smart driving”.
The heat wave of the end-to-end large model undoubtedly inspired Xiaopeng’s internal technical “blood”.
He Xiaopeng also stressed the expectation of the coming era of self-driving more than once, and pressed the smart driving “acceleration button” for the company.
In May this year, Xiaopeng released China’s first mass production end-to-end large model, including neural network XNet, regulation and control large model XPlanner and large language model XBrain.
Based on video training with equivalent mileage of 1 billion +, real car test with cumulative mileage of more than 6.
46 million, and simulation test with cumulative mileage of more than 216 million, its end-to-end large model can achieve “two-day iteration” and increase its intelligent driving ability by 30 times in the next 18 months.
Photo: Xiaopeng Motor, on July 3, Xiaopeng MONA M03 opened the world’s first show, he Xiaopeng further revealed that the current iteration speed of Xiaopeng smart driving is very fast, there are four iterative upgrades per week, and the training system is getting smarter and smarter.
Of course, at this stage, intelligent driving in the whole market is still in the stage of assisted driving, and in the view of he Xiaopeng, “all are still in the category of 60-70 points.
” He believes that when fully assisted driving, that is, Xiaopeng is doing end-to-end, the situation will be different.
After the changes in the past few months, Xiaopeng’s intellectual driving ability will have a huge leap compared with the past, 60 points to 80 points.
According to the latest statistics of the China Intelligent Network Alliance for Automobile Industry Innovation, in 2023, 9.
953 million intelligent network connected passenger cars with combined driving assistance functions were sold, with a market penetration rate of 47.
3%, and the industry has entered the fast lane.
Nowadays, with the full push of unlimited XNGP smart driving function, Xiaopeng intelligent driving has realized that “every road can be opened all over the country”.
According to its plan, Xiaopeng will achieve urban smart driving comparable to high-speed smart driving experience in 2025, and achieve L4-like intelligent driving experience in China.
Under pressure in many ways, we have to be eager to drive wisely.
We can see that Xiaopeng is undoubtedly walking very fast on the road of autopilot.
Combined with its recent movements, Xiaopeng is actually very anxious about the key battle of AI intelligent driving.
First of all, it is the pressure from the continuous fermentation of the “catfish effect” that Tesla FSD is about to enter China.
For a long time, Tesla FSD’s entry into China has been like a story of “here comes the wolf”, but since the second half of last year, this story has been rapidly becoming true.
By 2024, substantial progress was finally made in this matter.
At the end of April, Musk paid a surprise visit to China, it was rumored to be to discuss the launch of FSD software in China and to seek approval.
at the same time, Tesla announced through the data security test that the domestic Model 3Unip Y met the automotive data safety compliance requirements.
In June, Tesla and Baidu Maps collaborated on map compliance.
Subsequently, according to Caixin, a person close to the Shanghai policy-making department said that the Shanghai autopilot demonstration zone had issued a road test license to Tesla, and FSD V12 may be being tested.
Source: Baidu, according to industry insiders, data compliance, map compliance and government filing areTesla FSD V12 into China three elements, it seems that the three elements are already in place, Tesla FSD entry into China is a certainty.
Looking back at the development of China’s new energy vehicle market, production and sales have increased by about 126 times in the past ten years, ranking first in the world for nine consecutive years.
To a large extent, this benefits from the entrance of Tesla, a “catfish”.
Now that the big end-to-end model heatwave is coming, FSD will also play this role in the transition from intelligent driving to autopilot.
Not only Xiaopeng, but also Xilai, ideal, Huawei and BYD are obviously speeding up the layout of the intelligent field, and the competition between them is also more anxious.
At the end of last year, it was ideal for the end-to-end model to set up a separate team, and it is planned that the end-to-end + VLM (visual language model) smart driving scheme will be launched to test users in the third quarter of this year, and more than 10 million clips-trained supervised autopilot will be launched by the end of this year and early next year.
In addition, Lang Xianpeng, vice president of intelligent driving of ideal car, revealed a few days ago that the focus of the next step is to mass produce NOA in a city without a map, and gradually replace the plan with a map, and it is expected to launch a national map-free NOA in the third quarter of this year.
On the other hand, it is reported that the structure of the intelligent driving research and development department was adjusted in June.
Previously, the part of intelligent driving research and development of Weilai is the part of perception, regulation and integration.
After adjustment, the perception and regulation teams are merged into a large model team, and the integration team is reorganized into a delivery team.
Peng Chao, the head of the original Weilai perception team, is in charge of the merged large model team.
Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, who was still making fun of “self-driving is bullshit” last year, said at BYD’s 2023 shareholders’ meeting in June that BYD would apply AI to the field of driving assistance.
“at present, BYD has organized 4000 people and has established a huge team in all aspects of perception, decision-making, software and chips, and has carried out all-round layout in the industrial chain, software, algorithms, chips, programs and so on.
” Later, it was revealed that BYD would set up a separate “Tianxuan” intelligent driving development department to develop its own intelligent driving system, which was spun off by the self-research team of the Intelligent driving Research and Development Center of the Planning Institute, but on a par with the latter in terms of organizational structure.
The determination of major car companies to compete with high-level smart drivers is obvious to all, and there is no doubt about Xiaopeng’s response speed, but returning to Xiaopeng’s interior, its frequent personnel adjustments are also a challenge to stabilize the morale of the intelligent driving team.
The team changed blood frequently and sales were under pressure.
In June, it was reported that Yishu Lin (Lin Yishu), the head of Xiaopeng Zhizhi in North America, had resigned.
After Lin Yishu left, Junyao, another senior member of the smart driving team, took over most of his work.
However, Xiaopeng officials did not respond to this.
In addition, the person who recently left Xiaopeng is Pengyue Zhang, the head of the static group of perception module, who also joined in 2019.
Lin Yishu, a veteran of Xiaopengzhiju and a former head of LinkedIn technology, was joined by Wu Xinzhou, the former head of Xiaopeng Zhiju, as the head of big data’s team in 2019.
In fact, since the departure of Wu Xinzhou, the soul of Xiaopeng in August last year, the conduction effect has been released continuously, and the Xiaopeng Zhi driving team has changed frequently.
Source: he Xiaopeng Weibo, it is understood that at almost the same time as Wu Xinzhou left, Liu Lan Zechuan, the director in charge of Xpilot, and Parixit Aghera, the head of software, left Xiaopeng one after another.
Among them, Liu Lan Zechuan followed Wu Xinzhou to Nvidia.
In January this year, Wang Jing, the former head of North American smart driving awareness, also left.
It is worth noting that the core members of Xiaopeng Zhichi, including Lin Yishu, Parixit Aghera and Wang Meng, were recruited by Wu Xinzhou.
At present, Li Liyun, a former Baidu Apollo member who joined Wu Xinzhou in the same period, is still in office.
While there is a frequent loss of veteran smart drivers, fresh blood is also injected into Xiaopeng.
For example, in March this year, Xianming Liu, a former senior engineer in GM’s self-driving Cruise company, joined Xiaopeng as head of Xiaopeng’s AI team, replacing Liu Lan Zichuan.
It is reported that some Cruise engineers and Waymo engineers have also joined Xiaopeng.
Yuan Tingting, former head of self-driving business at Alibaba Dama, joined Xiaopeng as senior director of self-driving products of Xiaopeng, replacing Liu Yilin, senior director of self-driving products of Xiaopeng.
Photo: Xiaopeng Automobile, since the end of 2022, Xiaopeng has set off an organizational change involving many departments, and the intelligent driving team is no exception.
It is understood that Xiaopeng set up an AI department under the intelligent driving department, specializing in promoting end-to-end technology.
At the same time, Xiaopeng is also opening up posts, and he Xiaopeng has revealed that 4000 new AI talents will be recruited this year.
For a company, the rapid flow of talent is not conducive to the stability of the team.
Xiaopeng insiders also admitted that the team is still in a running-in period, different camps have different ideas, “the culture of the past is indeed being diluted.
” In the organizational structure of continuously changing personnel, the pressure from the list of new forces lagging behind in sales also appears on Xiaopeng Motor.
In the final analysis, the competitiveness of the automobile industry depends on sales volume from electric to intelligent, from product marketing to technological innovation.
According to statistics, in June 2024, Xiaopeng delivered a total of 10668 new cars, an increase of 24% over the same period last year and 5% month-on-month growth.
In the first half of this year, Xiaopeng’s overall sales performance was mediocre, with a total of 52000 new cars delivered from January to June, ranking behind ideal, intersecting, EAnn, Ultram, Zero, Polar Krypton, Deep Blue, Teng Teng and Nezha.
The gap has been continuously opened in the new power brand.
According to Xiaopeng’s original annual sales target of 280000 vehicles, it only achieved 19% of its annual sales target in the first half of the year, and it needs to achieve its monthly sales target of 38000 vehicles in the next six months, which shows the great pressure.
In order to reverse the decline in sales, Xiaopeng will add two new cars in the second half of the year-one is the MONA M03, which was officially disclosed a few days ago, which will be officially launched in August, focusing on the mainstream market of less than 200000 yuan.
It is reported that the biggest features of the MONA series are AI and smart driving.
He Xiaopeng stressed that the smart driving capability of MONA 03 will be “the best in the same class”.
the other is Xiaopeng brand’s new B-class pure electric sedan, which is scheduled to be delivered in the fourth quarter.
Photo source: Xiaopeng Automobile, at present, the sales pressure of Xiaopeng in the second half of the year has been given to the MONA M03, which claims to maximize the integration of Xiaopeng’s past experience and technology.
However, the fierce competition in the price market of 200000 yuan, the unstoppable price war, and the trend of high domestic mixing and slowing down of pure electricity all makeXiaopeng’s sales boost has become full of unknown.
, 2024 is the tenth year of Xiaopeng Automobile’s establishment.
According to the goal set by He Xiaopeng, its performance in 2024 will double compared with last year.
The organization must make up for all shortcomings, and its operations must begin to move towards high-quality.
In addition, Xiaopeng also gave a new market positioning-the global pioneer and popularization of AI smart driving.
As of now, the proportion of R & D personnel of Xiaopeng Automobile has exceeded 40%, and the R & D investment in 2024 will reach 3.
5 billion yuan.
In addition to planning to add 4000 new employees to the AI team, more than 700 million yuan will be invested every year in computing power training in the future.
This year, Xiaopeng has also officially entered a technology dividend period, and its product advantages continue to expand.
The financial report shows that thanks to the technical benefits gained from cooperation with Volkswagen, Xiaopeng Automobile’s service and other sales in the first quarter of this year were 462 million yuan, nearly 100 million yuan more than the revenue of 366 million yuan in the same period last year.
How to hold on to the company’s smart driving long board in the increasingly fierce external competition and internal blood exchange, reverse the sales decline, and welcome the era of AI smart driving ChatGPT? Xiaopeng is still answering this question.
But obviously, smart driving is a card he is eager to play.
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