XPeng Motors to Shift to Pure Visual Solution, May Give Up Lidar in New Model
TapTechNews July 9th news, according to foreign media CnEVPost citing informed sources, XPeng Motors' new model in the fourth quarter (internal code F57) will not use any lidar, but shift to a pure visual intelligent driving solution similar to Tesla's FSD.
Reports said this is a major shift for XPeng Motors, as the company was the world's first to install lidar in mass-produced vehicles.
In September 15, 2021, XPeng Motors launched the P5 electric sedan, and its top-of-the-line model is equipped with two lidars. After P5, the facelifted P7, P7i, and new models including G6, G9, and X9 are all equipped with lidar.
TapTechNews noted that XPeng Motors Chairman He Xiaopeng went to California, the US, earlier this year and experienced Tesla's FSD V12.3.6 version and Waymo's self-driving.
He Xiaopeng pointed out: In the San Francisco urban area, Waymo performs better, while FSD performs extremely well in Silicon Valley and on highways and can reach a very high score, and many road conditions are handled very smoothly. He also said that he is very impressed by the great progress of FSD in a few months, XPeng Motors will also learn from FSD for their excellent functional points and user experience parts, I believe 2025 will be the ChatGPT moment of fully autonomous driving!
Sources said the purpose of He Xiaopeng's trip is to pave the way for XPeng Motors to launch a pure visual solution similar to Tesla's. Giving up lidar may be to make XPeng Motors' technical stack consistent with Tesla's, and the end-to-end large model technology used in Tesla's FSD V12 is becoming an industry consensus.
In addition to keeping in line with Tesla in the technical direction, sources said there may also be cost considerations for giving up the use of lidar. XPeng Motors' management said in the earnings call on May 21 that the XPeng brand will start delivering a new B-class all-electric sedan in the fourth quarter of this year, which is the first model to achieve the goal of reducing technical costs by 25%.
It is worth noting that under this breaking news, Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a comment with three dots ....
