Will Xiaopeng start an AI arms race? This 1024 Technology Day is not that simple

01 The King of Volumes is making another effort

As a new force in domestic car manufacturing, Xiaopeng, which calls itself "a tech geek", undoubtedly fits the public's stereotype of "tech geeks changing the world" better than some of its competitors who are active on social media.

Like a martial arts master who devotes himself to seclusion, he only hopes to master peerless martial arts one day, and his last move will make him famous throughout the world.

Xiaopeng and his group of science and engineering men are working hard in an unknown place, doing things that are enough to change history.

On October 24, 2019, Xiaopeng brought "1024", a holiday unique to programmers, into the Chinese automotive industry for the first time, which became a new window to showcase Xiaopeng's technological leadership.

It took five years for Xiaopeng to go from having only one G3 to popularize science to having a full range of products and achievements in multiple fields. Today, Xiaopeng is running wild in the field of intelligent driving and has become a witness, practitioner and leader in the era of intelligent acceleration.

On October 24, 2023, the "Xpeng Technology Spring Festival Gala" that many programmers have been looking forward to arrived as scheduled.

At the press conference, the company's CEO He Xiaopeng first launched the slogan of "King of Intelligent Driving", and displayed a number of products in one breath, including high-end intelligent driving, smart cockpit, the first MPV, flying car, bipedal robot and "One More Thing" new car X9, and refused to "set flags" and "draw cakes with PPT", and announced in a high-profile manner that the company will complete the coverage of high-end intelligent driving across the country in 2024, and take the lead in the urban NOA battle.

2023 will be a turbulent year for Xiaopeng.

First, the sales of its flagship product, the "volume version of Tesla", the Xpeng G9, fell short of expectations, with revenue of 9.1 billion yuan in the first half of the year, down 38.9% year-on-year, falling behind "Wei, Xiaopeng and Li Auto". Xpeng, which handed in a dismal financial report, was jokingly called the "price war sacrifice"; then there were frequent personnel changes, with former Great Wall Motors General Manager Wang Fengying joining, "soul figure" Wu Xinzhou leaving, and Vice President Li Feng being arrested for corruption...

On the 1024 Technology Day, Xiaopeng boosted confidence with Li Liyun's smooth handover and products, showing everyone its flourishing technology tree and Xiaopeng's ambition to focus on intelligent driving but not just on intelligent driving.

After the press conference, Xpeng Motors broke free from the gloom and its stock price surged 10.28% to US$15.34, with a total market value of US$13.293 billion.

He Xiaopeng said that we often heard about software-defined cars in the past, but there will be huge changes in the future. The next five years will be a new era of smart cars defined by AI.

As an important part of Xiaopeng's AI ecosystem, robots have also made breakthrough progress and are just one step away from mass production. This proves that if a company can make smart cars well, then with its strong R&D strength, it can also make smart robots well.

02 Humanoid robot debuts: "stepping" on Xiaomi and "punching" Tesla

On the 1024 Xiaopeng Motors Technology Day, the bipedal humanoid robot PX5 made its debut. The PX5, which appeared on the stage while waving and trotting, caused the audience to exclaim: Isn’t this better than the Tesla Bot that was carried onto the stage at the Tesla AI Conference and whose functions were only disclosed through PPT?

Xiaopeng has also become the second car company after Tesla to bring its self-developed bipedal humanoid robot to the public.

Walk steadily

Xiaopeng, which entered the robotics field early, has been exploring the optimal form of intelligent robots.

From four legs to two legs, PX5 has been fully upgraded and has the industry's top bipedal walking and obstacle-crossing capabilities. With high-performance joints and high-stability walking capabilities, it can support more than 2 hours of indoor and outdoor walking and obstacle-crossing, and can walk in big strides even in complex environments such as gravel and grass.

The PX5 adopts a "straight-leg" design, which has a more natural gait, eliminates small steps, and is closer to humans. While maintaining elegance and beauty, the efficient walking method doubles the cruising range compared to "bent-knee" walking.

In addition to its steady walking, the PX5 has many other amazing "little highlights": it can not only play football and cross-country running, but also ride on the Xiaomi balance bike to participate in an obstacle course competition. It can also turn into a "tumbler" in the face of impact and remain strong...

Hold on tight

The flexibility of the “hands” is also a highlight.

PX5 uses an ultra-lightweight humanoid robot arm with 7 degrees of freedom and 0.05mm repeatability , as well as a single-handed 11-degree-of-freedom humanoid dexterous hand with rigid-flexible hybrid drive. In addition, PX5 also realizes integrated drive and control, and has terminal tactile perception capabilities, enabling it to imitate human movements and flexibly grasp and carry objects of different shapes, even paper towels, flexible balls, etc.

Soft Power

The hardware part performs brilliantly, and the design concept of the software part of PX5 is benchmarked against Tesla, aiming to incorporate humanoid robots into its own industrial chain and completely achieve "self-sufficiency".

In the future, Xiaopeng will equip PX5 with smart car homologous technologies including XNGP, XEEA electronic and electrical architecture, XPower, XGPT Lingxi large model, XOS, etc., and try to get it off the production line and into stores, and implement it in production and service scenarios, to achieve a deep connection between smart robots and AI cars, and push smart driving to the next level.

It took five months for the robot to achieve stable walking from four legs to two legs. As a new force in the car company that first achieved breakthroughs in the field of humanoid robots, Xiaopeng demonstrated its accumulation and innovative strength in core technologies to the industry.

PX5 is still in its "infant" stage. With the continuous development of technology, its functions will become more and more diverse, and the development focusing on specific application scenarios will also be increasingly optimized.

Musk claimed that Optimus Prime will be put into mass production next year, and Xiaopeng also set a goal: it hopes that by October 24 next year, the bipedal robot will be able to patrol the Xiaopeng factory and even help sell cars in sales outlets.

Perhaps in the near future, we will be able to see the "further evolution" of PX5.

03 Why are emerging car companies flocking to robots?

Whether it is smart driving or robots, there is one topic that cannot be avoided, and that is Musk.

As a pioneer in smart driving that leads the trend of new energy, Musk's statement that "Tesla's greatest value in the future lies in the Optimus humanoid robot, and the potential market demand will exceed 10 billion" has pushed humanoid robots to a new trend, making them a "hot commodity" sought after by many giants and capital.

Even in the battle of thousands of models led by ChatGPT, humanoid robots remain sharp and can even "get a piece of the pie" as the best carrier of intelligence.

Musk has shown his strength, and major car companies that are keen on fighting Tesla closely are not far behind. They have made cross-border layouts, demonstrated their determination to innovate, and flexed their technological muscles: Hyundai acquired 80% of Boston Dynamics, Geely invested in Kejie Robotics, SAIC established Saichuang Robotics, and BYD bet on Zhihui Junzhiyuan Robotics...

Xiaopeng Motors was established as early as 2016, and later released the smart horse and quadruped robot, and was one of the first teams to "take the plunge".

Why are car companies, which are in a state of "involution", targeting robots?

There has been a lot of debate on whether the ultimate goal of cars is to become robots.

Some people say that driverless cars are another form of robots, except that one is a reproduction of human driving behavior and the other is an all-round imitation of humans.

Ultimately, no matter how smart cars and robots are defined or how the concepts are extended, they all belong to high-end manufacturing, have the same underlying logic, the same algorithm framework, and face the same transformation challenges and development opportunities.

From a technical perspective, autonomous driving and robots share the same three core technologies: environmental perception, decision-making, and control. They also have commonalities in basic communications, software, and system architecture.

This is one of the reasons why many manufacturers are trying to further expand their business when driverless cars have not yet been truly implemented. Compared with the real transition from "0" to "1", car companies have certain basic support and will avoid many transformation pains.

But even so, it is not easy for car companies to "create humans", and they need to overcome many "acclimatization issues".

For example, cars are often in high-speed moving environments and require extremely strong safety performance and emergency protection mechanisms, and high-computing chips are needed to support real-time computing; while for intelligent robots, the computing requirements will be reduced in the industrial and commercial scenarios commonly used at this stage.