XPeng has launched the pilot program of its City Navigation Guided Pilot (City NGP), an advanced driver assistance system that integrates functions for complex urban driving scenarios.
Similar to Tesla's Full Self-Driving Beta (FSD Beta) program, XPeng's City NGP is the first such high-level ADAS from a Chinese auto company. Offered initially on a fleet of XPeng P5 electric sedans in the Guangzhou area, City NGP can be accessed by customers through over-the-air (OTA) updates. The program will launch to other cities later on.
"With the rollout of City NGP, XPeng is spearheading a strategic roadmap to complete our ADAS coverage from highways and parking lots to much more complex city driving scenarios, offering our customers enhanced safety and an optimized driving experience. We believe the continuous evolvement of City NGP and the expansion of its coverage will accelerate the transformation of the driving experiences of our customers."
He Xiaopeng, Chairman and CEO of XPeng
According to XPeng, when City NGP is activated with a set destination, the vehicle itself can perform the full range of driving tasks. Those include cruising with a safe distance from leading vehicles, changing lanes due to navigation or vehicle overtaking decisions, handling merging/splitting roads, getting around stationary vehicles or obstacles, and maintaining an appropriate speed throughout the driving route.
The system can also automatically detect and react to traffic lights, make lane change decisions and inform drivers, take left or right turns, and navigate through intersections, roundabouts, viaducts and tunnels. In addition, City NGP can avoid obstructions like construction, pedestrians, and cyclists.
City NGP is powered by an ADAS platform offering 360-degree fusion perception courtesy of a multi-modality sensor fusion framework with cameras, LiDAR units, millimeter-wave radars, high-precision positioning units and other sensor hardware.
XPeng also introduced an enhanced Surrounding Reality (SR) display, which is said to visualize a vehicle's surrounding objects and project them in 3D, together with high-definition map information, on both the digital dashboard and central panel in real-time.
City NGP will be first made available on the premium version of the XPeng P5 as part of the XPilot 3.5 system. The system requires a seven-day familiarization period and 100 kilometers (62 miles) of driving before its functions can be used on all available roads. XPeng says this is done "to ensure sufficient knowledge of safety procedures."
The next model to get the full-scenario ADAS will be the new flagship G9 SUV, XPeng's fourth production model that will officially launch in China on September 21. Now watch the most recent official video of the City NGP driver-assistance function performing a no-intervention drive during a rainy evening in Guangzhou (below) and another video of XPeng CEO He Xiaopeng testing the system (above).
