Chinese luxury EV startup XPeng is moving forward on its plans to launch a robotaxi business. The company’s latest G9 SUV became China’s first mass-produced commercial vehicle to pass a government-led autonomous driving closed-field test, the company said Monday at its fourth annual 1024 Tech Day.
When XPeng unveiled the G9 in September, the company said it would come equipped with XPeng’s new advanced driver assist system (ADAS), the XNGP, which combines XPeng’s Highway Navigated Guided Pilot (NGP) and City NGP to automate certain driving functions in both highway and urban driving scenarios.
Now, XPeng says the XNGP is good enough to lay the groundwork for a robotaxi network, and the G9 can help that network scale, according to XPeng’s vice president of autonomous driving, Dr. Xinzhou Wu.
“Obtaining the road test permit by our mass-produced commercial vehicles — with no retrofit — is a major achievement,” said Wu at XPeng’s Tech Day. “Our platform-based robotaxi development aims to …
