XPeng CEO explores current upsides & downsides of XPeng self-driving tech
Every automaker and their cousin is going to lead us into an autonomous driving future … according to their press departments. In actuality, I think there are only a few automakers that have deep in-house teams focused on impressive internal innovation to get to that eventual goal. In the shorter term, that kind of leadership also allows them to have the best ADAS (advanced driver assistance system) features. Aside from Tesla, the top company I’ve been keeping an eye on in this field is XPeng. I know they have a robust internal team focused on full-stack development of autonomous driving tech and I know they are taking an interesting approach that integrates more types of hardware than Tesla (lidar, radar, and cameras instead of just cameras). On the software side, I would guess that they have more software developers focused on this than anyone but Tesla. In short, I think it’s one of the top companies that could potentially innovate itself into a pole position in this field — temporarily if not even in the long term. I’m not predicting that (I’m not making such a prediction for any automaker, autonomous driving startup, or automotive supplier), but it’s one clear possibility.