Xpeng Motors Selects RTI Connectivity Technology to Advance Development of Highly Autonomous Systems for New P7 Smart Electric Vehicle

Xpeng to become first Chinese automotive company to use Connext DDS in mass-produced vehicles

RTI, a leading provider of connectivity solutions for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), today announced that Xpeng, a leading smart car design and manufacturer, has selected Connext® DDS as the connectivity framework for its latest mass-produced model, the Xpeng P7 smart electric sedan. The use of RTI technology enables Xpeng Motors to deliver a highly reliable, powerful and advanced autonomous driving system in its second-generation electric vehicle. Xpeng Motors will begin delivering its P7 vehicles to customers in the second quarter of 2020, making it the first Chinese company to use Connext DDS in a mass-produced autonomous vehicle model.

In the past few months, Xiaopeng Motors has unveiled a series of high-end technologies and design highlights of the P7, making it the first mass-produced model that meets financial industry standards for digital automotive key technologies and is the first to be equipped with Alibaba's In-Car Mini APP platform. Xiaopeng Motors also announced in November that it had signed an agreement with Alipay to jointly develop in-car payment functions. This function will also be first implemented in P7 vehicles. The Chinese smart electric vehicle manufacturer also announced in November that it had signed a $400 million Series C financing agreement to accelerate its business growth.

Based on the Smart Electric Platform Architecture (“SEPA”), the P7 will feature the XPILOT 3.0 autonomous driving system, powered by Connext DDS, to enable progressive Level 3 autonomous driving. RTI continues to support Xpeng Motors’ vision to produce intelligent autonomous vehicles for the mid-range Chinese market, which accounts for the largest share of the global electric vehicle market.

Xpeng Motors uses Connext DDS in its highly complex P7 autonomous driving system to efficiently send and receive data in real time. RTI Connext DDS reduces risk and provides low latency, high reliability, scalability, and security essential for distributed systems. Connext DDS is the only framework deployed in hundreds of autonomous industrial applications, supporting the entire process of autonomous vehicles from R&D to production. The plug-and-play architecture, advanced DDS security, and support from ECU to backend enable Connext DDS users to develop and reuse software across the entire network stack while future-proofing their IP from market and technology changes.

In the process of developing P7, Xiaopeng Motors specifically applied the new features in RTI's Recording Service , which is the first readily available solution that is sufficient to achieve reliable and lossless recording, analysis and playback of real-time data, and can record messages and events at high rates and with high fidelity. With the Recording Service, users can now temporarily store the record log in RAM and refresh it to external storage as needed, allowing the SSD to be used for a long time on site. This provides a simpler and more effective repair method for system debugging.

“As a leader in smart electric vehicles, Xpeng Motors is very proud to work with industry leader RTI to deliver fully connected, highly stable and reliable autonomous vehicles for mass-produced models,” said Wu Xinzhou, Vice President of Autonomous Driving R&D at Xpeng Motors. “This collaboration demonstrates Xpeng Motors’ strong capabilities as a leader in smart electric vehicles. The Xpeng P7 represents a new generation of autonomous vehicles, and we are pleased to provide our customers with state-of-the-art features backed by top industry technology.”

“The global autonomous vehicle market is growing rapidly. Xpeng Motors is a very innovative company in the Chinese market and RTI is very proud to work with them and support their vision for the next generation of autonomous vehicles,” said Bob Leigh, senior market development director of autonomous driving systems at RTI. “Xpeng Motors has a unique vision that is critical to RTI’s growth and the unique capabilities it adds to our technology. RTI and Xpeng Motors are working together to drive the development of a next-generation DDS-based automotive architecture and transform the software design and development process to get these new vehicles to market faster.”

RTI and Xpeng Motors will demonstrate their autonomous vehicle solutions at CES 2020 in booth #713 at the CES Westgate Convention Center.

About RTI

RTI (Real-Time Innovations) is a provider of interconnect solutions for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). RTI Connext® Databus is a real-time data sharing software framework that supports numerous application software to work together as a single integrated system. It integrates various application systems and combines field applications, fog computing and cloud computing. It has reliability, security, performance and scalability. It has been widely verified in demanding industrial systems and has been deployed in many medical devices, imaging systems, wind, water and solar systems, autonomous aircraft, trains, cars and traffic management systems, oil and gas, robots, ships and defense application systems.

RTI is the largest provider of the Object Management Group (OMG) Data Distribution Service™ (DDS) standard. 

RTI is a privately held company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, USA.

About Xpeng Motors

Xpeng Motors is a leading Chinese electric vehicle company that designs and manufactures cars that are seamlessly integrated with the internet and use the latest artificial intelligence technology. The company's initial backers include Chairman He Xiaopeng, founder of UCWeb Inc. and former Alibaba executives. Xpeng Motors was co-founded in 2014 by Xia Xia and He Tao, former executives of Guangzhou Automobile Group, who have extensive expertise in innovative automotive technology and R&D. Xpeng Motors has received capital from prominent Chinese and international investors including Alibaba Group, Xiaomi Corporation and IDG Capital, and launched its first mass-produced model, the G3 SUV, in December 2018. Xpeng's second mass-produced model, the P7 four-door electric sedan, debuted at the Shanghai Auto Show in April 2019 and will be delivered to Chinese customers in the second quarter of 2020. Xpeng Motors is headquartered in Guangzhou, China.