Recently, many new G9 car owners have talked about not fully understanding the differences in Peng’s advanced driving assistance features, including the capabilities of Pro and Max models. While taking the kids to class and sipping coffee over the weekend, I wrote a small science lesson. For old Peng fans who already know about this, you can skip it.
- Both Pro and Max are equipped with Peng’s most outstanding advanced driving assistance technology, including:
- Automatic parking, which has always been the best on the market since Peng’s first car G3. The key indicator is not whether the car can park or not, but how fast it parks. How fast, you ask? Within 35 seconds, almost the same as an experienced driver. The second indicator is that it can park in more spots, especially in parallel parking, where it excels. The third one, a unique skill, is memory parking. If you have an underground parking garage at home, this feature comes in handy. From a certain distance when entering the garage, through learning your driving route, it can help you park all the way to your space. If you go to public parking lots and charging stations, there are countless routes shared by car owners from all over the country to guide you. Currently, memory parking is a little slower than human driving, at about 70-80% speed. But for Peng fans with underground parking spaces, it’s worth it. In addition, the main difference between Pro and Max here is that Max will use new sensing technology in the future, with the ability to park in even more spots, and support multiple levels in underground parking garages (Pro has to go down to B2 or B3 on its own). And in the future, there is a chance that it will be even faster.
- NGP, or Navigation Guided Pilot, is an advanced driving assistance feature that can be used on highways, urban ring roads, and expressways. It is a higher level feature than the cruise control and lane-keeping that everyone is familiar with. As long as you use navigation and are in an area with high-precision maps, it can automatically change lanes, overtake, and adjust the speed according to the road speed limit. When encountering construction or obstacles, it will also make evasive moves (note that this is still an advanced driving assistance feature, not automatic driving, so drivers still need to pay attention to the road conditions). This is also Peng’s star feature, loved and hated by many old car owners in the community. The main reason is that many of our previous features were more direct and masculine, with room for improvement in terms of speed limit adjustment, lane changing ability, and overall comfort. The technology is strong, but our products could do better, and they will be in the future with both Pro and Max. The main difference here between Pro and Max will be the new sensing capability, high computational power, and LiDAR technology, which will make it stronger in obstacle avoidance and bypassing. In other words, drivers will need to intervene less. Recently, some car owners in the community have reported that P7 and P5 can travel 30-70 kilometers without any intervention or take-over. This can give you an initial idea of what to expect. There is hope that G9 can significantly improve this number. How popular is this feature? Currently, more than 60% of the mileage driven by the NGP on XPeng’s cars on highways and urban expressways is driven automatically, with artificial intelligence driving more than people. People have a lot of trust in it.
Additionally, from a coverage perspective, basically the vast majority of urban and highway roads in the country can be used, conservatively estimated at 80%. Even for some newly opened highways where the maps have not yet been collected by vendors, one can still use lane keeping and adaptive cruise control.
Furthermore, there is the City Navigation Guide Assistance (CNGP), a feature unique to the Max model equipped with laser radar. As the name suggests, it is a navigation assistance function for urban road driving. The logic is the same as on highways, but the technical difficulty is much greater. Currently, it is only available for mass production at the Peng plant, and even after investigating with other competitors, there are basically no users using it. Conservatively, this is also the first domestic release by Peng. This function involves more capabilities than highways, such as bypassing pedestrians and bicycles, temporary vehicles, avoiding buses and bus lanes, merging, roundabouts, traffic lights, turning left, right, and U-turning; these are abilities only needed in the city. Since its launch in Guangzhou on September 17, it has been even more popular than the highway feature. In just over a month, 80% of users use it every week, and over 60% of mileage is driven with NGP.
Of course, there are also some shortcomings. The computing power of the first-generation P5 model is relatively low, and some responses are not fast enough. Out of safety concerns, it is a bit conservative and the riding comfort is not good enough. But fortunately, the next version of the P5 will be improved, and G9 is expected to make significant improvements. In addition, there are many roads in the city, and domestic map vendors are still in the process of collecting data. Additionally, due to many regulatory restrictions in the city, map data is currently only available for trial in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chongqing, and Beijing (within the Fifth Ring Road is still not accessible). Currently, Peng factory only opens Guangzhou city and Shenzhen and Shanghai are still undergoing testing. However, friends who buy the Max model with G9 need not worry because the G9 model will apply a brand new technology that does not rely on high-precision maps, but this requires an R&D process. We hope that the open areas will be fully tested early on. This testing work is huge; we expect that in the third quarter of next year, there will be more than a dozen cities covered. Before it is opened, don't worry, you can check out LCC's recent evaluation video and article. Starting in the first quarter of next year, Max models can use a stronger LCC enhanced version, which is super strong! You can watch the video. Moreover, when using this LCC enhancement version, you can also make lane changes and turns with a lever. Although there is more manual operation, it is currently the world's strongest urban lane keeping feature.
In addition, because urban roads are very complex, laser radar and computing power are necessary and cannot be delegated in the future. So, if you want to use globally leading advanced technology, you must choose Max.
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There are also some security-related and auxiliary-related topics, which will be explained and interpreted in the next time.
ps: The cover photo is taken a few months ago of autonomous driving engineers testing vehicles under intense sunlight.
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This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.