Chinese smart electric vehicle (EV) company XPeng has announced the launch of a pilot program that will see its City Navigation Guided Pilot (City NGP) made available to certain customers.
The OEM states that the launch will make it the first Chinese automotive company to use such a high-level of advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) functions for vehicle navigation in complicated urban driving conditions.
A select group of customers with XPeng P5 vehicles in Guangzhou will now be able to access the OEM’s City NGP via over-the-air (OTA) updates ahead of the software launching to other cities.
When provided with a set destination, a vehicle using City NGP is capable of conducting a wide variety of driving tasks including the navigation of roads while leaving a safe distance to vehicles ahead, lane changes due to vehicles overtaking or navigation decisions, merging into traffic or steering around stationary objects or other vehicles at the correct speed. Additionally, City NGP can also detect and react to changing traffic lights, carry out left and right turns at various different roadways, all while avoiding pedestrians and cyclists.
The OEM’s latest ADAS platform consists of a multi-modality sensor fusion framework with cameras, lidar units, millimeter-wave radars, high-precision positioning units and other sensors and hardware to provide the vehicle with an accurate 360° perception of its surroundings. Furthermore, XPeng has also introduced the Surrounding Reality (SR) display. This works by visualizing objects around the vehicle before projecting them in 3D onto the digital dashboard and central panel.
City NGP requires a seven-day familiarization period and 100km of driving to ensure the vehicle and its ADAS software understands safety procedures coherently. Once this is completed the functions can be used on public roads.
To begin with, City NGP will be available on the company’s premium version of the XPeng P5. The full-scenario ADAS will be available on the company’s upcoming G9 SUV.
“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,” said He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO, XPeng. “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.”
