Author: Mu Mu
In recent years, CES has gradually become a feast for automakers, mainly because they always bring the most eye-catching technologies.
This year’s CES, there was an automaker that did not have an official booth, but you could see its presence in many places at the exhibition, that is XPeng.
What makes XPeng stand out at CES is also its technology, including the XPeng 001 with Mobileye’s intelligent driving system and the specialized autonomous driving vehicle for Waymo, which demonstrates its strength in the development of vehicle architecture and autonomous driving applications.
In fact, XPeng’s technical strength is not only reflected in the 2023 CES. It also has many impressive technological achievements outside the show with its fast and wide layout technology, which matches the new forces in the fiercely competitive car-making industry in terms of highlights and real technical strength.
In the era of automotive transformation, where new technologies and brands continue to emerge, XPeng has quickly established a foothold.
XPeng Appears at CES with Two Vehicles
At this year’s CES, Waymo showcased its customized autonomous driving vehicle, which is also a specialized travel product for Waymo One’s autonomous driving fleet.
This customized vehicle is based on the “Haohan – M Architecture” developed by XPeng.
Regarding the intelligent driving system, the Haohan – M Architecture is pre-embedded with the autonomous driving interface, which can access level 4 or higher autonomous driving systems and be compatible with various autonomous driving technology solutions.
Meanwhile, this customized vehicle also has many features of the ZEEKR M-Vision concept vehicle, such as no B-pillar, low-lying gap between body and ground, flexible layout of the seats, spacious interior space, flat floor design, etc.
On the other hand, Mobileye, a subsidiary of Intel, showcased two vehicles at its booth: XPeng 001 and NIO ES8.
The cooperation between Mobileye and XPeng is to provide SuperVision solution. Next, XPeng 009 will also be equipped with SuperVision.The two cars from Xpeng would appear respectively at the booths of Waymo and Mobileye, which means different significance to Xpeng.
During the era of fuel-based vehicles, Waymo had two waves of collaboration with car manufacturers:
- The first wave was using the Lexus RX450h as a test vehicle;
- The second wave was purchasing hybrid models like the Chrysler Pacifica in large quantities.
At that time, being chosen as a partner by Waymo was a glory for car manufacturers.
As a company that develops L4 level autonomous driving technology, Xpeng’s requirements for purchasing vehicles were to meet its own retrofitting needs. Therefore, being selected by Waymo represents not only the added value of orders, but also a recognition of the entire vehicle architecture.
Entering the era of pure electric vehicles, Waymo turns to Xpeng as a partner for autonomous vehicles, but the protagonist seems to have changed. Waymo wants to create products based on a pure electric platform instead of retrofitting traditional fuel-based vehicles. Therefore, Waymo needs an advanced and scalable pure electric platform.
Moreover, this platform needs to meet several requirements:
- It needs to be an advanced pure electric platform, with a highly flexible development space.
- It needs to have a more integrated electronic and electrical architecture, while supporting Waymo’s flexible changes.
- It needs to have advanced manufacturing capabilities to ensure product quality.
- It needs to be a global vehicle platform with the ability to promote globally.
The best platform that meets these requirements is none other than the “HAOMA-M” of Xpeng, which, in An Conghui’s words, its greatest feature and advantage is its scalability.
In simple terms, “HAOMA-M” is no longer just a vehicle platform concept, but a vehicle architecture that can meet the needs of A-D class passenger cars, and the advanced electronic and electrical architecture can also take into account autonomous driving vehicles.
This first shows that the SEA architecture is successful in the era of pure electric vehicles.
This is not a coincidence.
Another autonomous driving giant, Baidu, also founded Jidu based on SEA framework after announcing its vehicle production plan.
In addition, the models under the Xpeng brand are also built based on SEA framework. As a result, vehicles built based on the SEA framework are expected to reach millions in scale within the next few years.Using SEA-M architecture based on SEA, Zeekr has provided Waymo with updates to custom autonomous driving models, indicating that Zeekr has taken a solid step in the To B business.
Zeekr’s appearance at Mobileye’s booth carries a different meaning. Mobileye is an important player in the era of advanced driver-assistance systems. In the era of advanced autonomous driving, Mobileye is also the strongest player among visual algorithm suppliers. Furthermore, Mobileye has maintained a continuous partnership with automakers in the field of autonomous driving.
At this year’s CES, Mobileye announced that by 2030, the revenue of its ADAS products will exceed $17 billion, and its SuperVision product is expected to take $3.5 billion in revenue. Mobileye has entrusted the China debut of SuperVision to Zeekr, which in itself illustrates its high regard for Zeekr.
Currently, Zeekr has begun comprehensive testing of its NZP high-speed autonomous navigation assistance system to keep up with the mainstream pace of autonomous driving landing. With this, Mobileye, Nvidia, and Qualcomm have stepped onto the arena of high-end autonomous driving for automakers by virtue of their autonomous driving chips.
Why is Zeekr able to appear at CES together with Waymo, Mobileye, and other companies and have such close relationships with them?
Willingness to Invest Heavily in Technology
To answer the above question, we must first understand Zeekr. Within the Geely Group, Zeekr has a particular identity. Both Geely Automobile and Lynk & Co, for example, are not brands with strict production-sales integration. Their R&D, production, and marketing are relatively independent. Zeekr, on the other hand, operates with more independence and agility.
Under the leadership of An Conghui, Zeekr has established clear field lines, mainly covering intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, intelligent architecture, and products. This team structure allows Zeekr to inherit the advantages of traditional car manufacturers in manufacturing and supply chain while also learning from user and internet thinking of new forces in car manufacturing and performing agile responses.On the other hand, Keenon’s investment in technology belongs to the type of player who dares to invest heavily once a decision is made.
SEA-M architecture provides a customized autonomous driving model for Waymo and relies on Geely’s SEA grand architecture.
In September 2020, at the Beijing Auto Show, SEA grand architecture appeared for the first time. An Conghui said a memorable sentence at the press conference: SEA took 5 years and cost 20 billion yuan to build.
That is to say, Geely Group confirmed as early as 2015 that it would transform towards electrification with pure electric as the core, and the determination shown was a 20 billion yuan investment.
Building cars using a pure electric architecture has only appeared in large-scale car companies’ pure electric platform products such as Volkswagen MEB and General Motors’ Ultium.
The advantage lies in the ability to flexibly expand and launch different levels of models, better meet the car-making needs during the transformation period of electrification and intelligence.
Keenon’s business expansion based on SEA architecture is a product that exerts the technical advantages of the Geely system and the cooperation of Volvo to the extreme. It belongs to the type that dares to do something once it sees the trend of industrial evolution.
To describe Keenon’s investment in intelligence, a few words suffice: heavy investment.
The autonomous driving strength shown by Keenon at this year’s CES is only part of it, and Keenon has even greater ambitions for autonomous driving, a kind of “last shall be first” meaning.
Two signals can illustrate this:
In November 2021, Keenon recruited Chen Qi, the founder of Huawei’s autonomous driving team and the former head of the autonomous driving R&D department, as the Vice President of Keenon’s autonomous driving, responsible for Keenon’s intelligent driving business, reporting to An Conghui.
In September 2022, Huang Renxun, the founder of NVIDIA, released the Thor chip for car use, which has a single computing power of up to 2000 TOPS. Keenon became the first car brand to carry Thor. Keenon’s next-generation smart electric car will be equipped with Thor and will start production in early 2025.
The introduction of Chen Qi and the first adoption of NVIDIA’s large computing power chips basically declare that Keenon has launched self-developed work for the entire autonomous driving stack.
Now, Jidu Auto’s autonomous driving development is taking a dual approach of “collaboration + self-development”.
- Collaboration: with Mobileye.
- Self-development: Jidu’s full-stack autonomous driving system is self-developed by Chen Qi’s team on Nvidia’s computing platform.
Currently, 1000 Tops is the ceiling of autonomous driving computing platforms, and Jidu needs to redistribute computing power based on 2000 Tops. It’s hard not to speculate whether they will target the next era of cockpit-integrated products for layout.
Jidu Auto’s layout in autonomous driving and its planned investment of billions of dollars make us underestimate its future potential.
As long as they determine what is right, they spare no effort to go for it, which is another form of “heroism”.
It has the confidence that Jidu Auto is backed by the giant support of the Geely system, and is not worried about the “100,000 units” life and death line that new car start-ups must cross, which allows them to steadily spend money where necessary.
Waymo and Mobileye are willing to cooperate with them, which should also be a recognition of Jidu Auto’s strength and essence of their technology.
Jidu Auto’s demonstration of its autonomous driving technology strength at CES 2023 is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of their technology landscape.
Jidu’s technological layout in the fields of intelligent cockpit, high-voltage platform, power battery, and energy recovery system is also outstanding.
One detail is:
In the field of intelligent cockpit, Jidu Auto once upgraded the original Qualcomm 820A chip to Qualcomm 8155 chip free of charge for users, spending 300 million yuan due to user feedback.
In addition, Jidu Auto’s first model, the Jidu 001, uses CATL’s battery, and Jidu’s self-built charging station has surpassed 600 stations in 110 cities nationwide, etc.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Jidu Auto is the emerging brand who best understands intelligent electric vehicles.
This is also why, with new auto brands such as WmAuto and others rushing to the front, traditional domestic auto brands have roughly understood the development path of intelligent electric vehicles, but only Jidu Auto has delivered tangible sales figures.
Jidu Auto’s first model, the Jidu 001, delivered 71,941 units throughout the year in 2022, with an average order amount exceeding 336,000 yuan, becoming a popular model with monthly deliveries exceeding 10,000 units.
Compared with other models like the Beijing Auto Senova Offspace and the Dongfeng Aeolus (Geelyng) GT, most models such as the Bestune Zeekr (BEIJING-X7) and the Dongfeng Aeolus (Geelyng) GT are facing the awkward and embarrassing situation of being admired but not consumed.
“JiKe’s goal is to double its sales by 2023 to around 140,000 vehicles and plans to expand its sales in Europe.” An Conghui said in an interview after the 2023 CES Technology Conference.
Rapid Development, Strategic Deployment
JiKe is moving forward with a fast-paced growth rate.
In addition to the aforementioned technology deployment, the company, founded in March 2021, quickly made important progress in the capital markets.
In December 2022, Geely Automobile announced that JiKe had submitted a confidential filing to the SEC on December 7, 2022 (New York time) regarding a possible initial public offering.
NIO was founded in 2014 and went public on the NYSE four years later. On the first day of trading, the stock price rose by 5.43% to close at $6.60 with market capitalization of $6.772 billion.
The plan to go public in the United States once again showed JiKe’s rapid pace.
In June 2022, Geely announced in its latest electrification strategy that “in the next three years, JiKe will launch multiple new models one after another, and JiKe’s annual sales will reach 650,000 units by 2025, ranking among the top three in the high-end electric vehicle market worldwide.”
From the perspective of its technological deployment and its existing sales momentum, it is highly likely that JiKe will achieve this goal.
In this round of transformation of traditional domestic brands, some players, like BYD and GAC Aion, are making a fortune in silence; while others, like JiKe and Momenta, are making strategic moves. Especially JiKe, its series of actions demonstrate its investment in technology and courage, and it remains to be seen how far they can be developed.
For JiKe, cooperation with Waymo is equivalent to an early test of the Robotaxi travel market; and cooperation with Mobileye will provide some experience for JiKe’s perception algorithm research and development.
Subsequently, as JiKe’s self-developed technology caught up, its intelligent shortcomings will gradually be addressed.
Next, what the outside world will see is an intelligent electric vehicle image that exhibits comprehensive technological strength.### Final Thoughts
The technical chessboard of Xpeng is rhythmic, dynamic, and full of potential. After weaving a thread, its true form can be seen.
Currently, the transition to new energy is the trend, and the battles of the “three electrifications,” intelligent cockpit, and autonomous driving have become prominent. Xpeng has already laid out a comprehensive plan in relevant technological fields with great ambition. It should be able to successfully break through soon.
We believe that doubling Xpeng’s sales volume next year is visible, and more unforeseeable technical surprises will continue to emerge.
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.