After Wu Xinzhou’s resignation: The history and future challenges of Xpeng Motors’ autonomous driving

Yesterday, Xpeng Motors lost a key executive, Wu Xinzhou, who was responsible for autonomous driving, announced his resignation. This news caused quite a stir in the industry. Although we regret this, let us also take this opportunity to review Xpeng's development path in autonomous driving technology. This technology may redefine the driving experience and become increasingly popular in the automotive market, influencing consumer purchasing decisions. Currently, the Chinese market is transitioning from L2 autonomous driving to L2++ and L3. Although L3 level autonomous driving technology has gradually entered a mature stage, it still needs to wait for the further improvement of relevant regulations to achieve commercial application.

Xpeng Motors is at the forefront of China's autonomous driving field, which is inseparable from the contribution of Dr. Wu Xinzhou. The following is the development history of Xpeng’s autonomous driving:

Part 1. The first stage of Xpeng’s autonomous driving

● Independent development stage

This stage was led by Xiao Zhiguang. At that time, the domestic autonomous driving team had nearly 30 people and developed functions such as fully automatic parking and automatic following. At this stage of development, it is more like traditional Tier 1 overcoming difficulties around the automatic parking function. In April 2018, Xiaopeng released G3 full-scenario automatic parking technology (XPILOT 2.0), which uses 20 sensors to perform visual functions and realize automatic parking, mainly to achieve intelligent driving in the last mile.

At that time, He Xiaopeng began planning to establish another autonomous driving R&D team in Silicon Valley to accelerate the development of autonomous driving technology.

● Gu Junli stage

In August 2017, He Xiaopeng hired Gu Junli, who has rich experience, as vice president of autonomous driving research and development. Gu Junli came with a halo.

This point in time is also the point when He Xiaopeng officially entered the game - in August 2017, He Xiaopeng joined Xpeng Motors as chairman. Therefore, He Xiaopeng traveled to the United States and personally recruited Gu Junli and served as vice president of autonomous driving research and development.

Gu Junli previously had extensive experience in software engineering and artificial intelligence research at companies such as Google and AMD, and was engaged in the development of Autopilot products while at Tesla. After joining Xpeng Motors, Gu Junli reported to He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xpeng Motors.

Xpeng Motors has attached great importance to the research and development of autonomous driving technology from the beginning. In June 2018, Desay SV and Xpeng Motors officially signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Guangzhou. The autonomous driving system cooperated by the two parties will provide three core automated assisted driving functions: low-speed valet parking, medium-speed TJP traffic jam assisted cruise, and high-speed valet driving.

From this stage, Xiaopeng gradually evolved.

Part 2. Wu Xinzhou stage

In March 2019, Wu Xinzhou officially joined Xpeng Motors as vice president of autonomous driving. He is fully responsible for Xpeng Motors' overall technology roadmap planning, business and team management of autonomous driving in the United States and China, and reports to He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xpeng Motors. . It can be said that from this stage, Xpeng’s autonomous driving began to get on the right track.

● The first stage of XPLIOT 3.0

From the timeline:

X pilot 2.0 and X pilot2.5 have been demonstrated on the G3 and P7 cars. The entire intelligent driving characteristics are quite satisfactory. The real changes start with X pliot 3.0 using NVIDIA Xvaier.

Xpeng Motors uses NVIDIA's Xavier chip for autonomous driving AI computing and processing  on Desay SV's autonomous driving domain controller , and Infineon's Aurix MCU to implement AEB and other safety-assisted driving controls. The self-driving software system relies on self-driving software and applications provided by BlackBerry's QNX and NVIDIA.

In terms of sensors, the Xpeng P7 XPILOT 3.0 system is equipped with multiple cameras , millimeter wave radar , ultrasonic radar and dual-frequency high-precision GPS. By learning from Tesla's approach, Xiaopeng adopts vision as the main focus in the field of autonomous driving and deploys autonomous driving through AI training image labeling. We can see iterations of this route.

Generally speaking, at this stage, Xpeng Motors mainly uses advanced chips to achieve eye-catching effects.

● From P5, G9 to G6

The XPILOT 3.5 installed on the P5 by Xiaopeng in 2022 focuses on very complex situations such as low-speed parking scenarios. Although the effect is good, P5 consumers do not pay for it.

After the P5 took a detour, at the end of 2022, Xpeng used two NVIDIA Orin chips on the G9, and the computing power will reach 508 TOPS - since then, it can be regarded as finding the direction of intelligent driving iteration. Although G9 still has problems with the positioning of the product itself, this route is determined. Starting from the G9 to the G6 in 2023, the intelligent driving function has gradually shifted from low-speed parking to intelligent commuting, which has been recognized by the market.

Judging from this stage, after a round of ups and downs, Xpeng Motors has gradually figured out how to coordinate automatic assisted driving with vehicle models.

Part 3. Post-Wu Xinzhou Era

Xiaopeng Motors CEO He Xiaopeng posted on Weibo that Wu Xinzhou expressed his intention to return to the United States in the second half of 2022. There were many reasons for this, but he respected and recognized his decision. In the following more than 10 months, Xpeng Motors made a lot of advance and proactive optimization and iteration in terms of structure and organization, and chose Dr. Li Liyun very early (Li Liyun had always been responsible for Xpeng's XNGP before). Take over the AD team.

He Xiaopeng said: "Xpeng will make organizational changes that are more oriented towards AI. I firmly believe that the software-defined cars in the past will become AI-defined cars. I will reconstruct Xiaopeng's intelligent team to integrate AD, cockpit, machine brain, EEA, There are also multiple innovative projects integrated into a more powerful intelligent team, and an intelligent planning and operation team will be added. I will personally lead this large team. I believe that AI and its operation experience will subvert the current automotive system."

I hope that Xpeng’s autonomous driving team will continue to move forward bravely and continue to ride the wind and waves on the intelligent track.

summary

I can finally pick up the G6 on Saturday. We hope that Xpeng Motors can continue to iterate on its autonomous driving system. Although a senior executive has been lost, the sky is not falling. We still have high hopes for Xpeng Motors.