China’s Xpeng Motors on Thursday launched its newest midsize crossover, the G7, featuring what it calls a future-proof design for Level 3 (L3) semi-autonomous driving capabilities at a price lower than those of strong competitors such as the Tesla Model Y and Xiaomi’s YU7. The G7, boasting a combination of class-leading technological functions, went on sale at a lower-than-expected price range of between RMB 195,800 and RMB 225,800 ($27,334-$31,522), with its top-end version approximately RMB 30,000 cheaper than the entry-level Model Y and YU7. The G7 is Xpeng’s first model that integrates its in-house developed seven-nanometer Turing chips for autonomous driving and digital cockpits, which the company said would enable the car to make a gradual transition from L2 advanced driver assistance to L3 intermediate autonomous driving. Three Turing chips together provide a staggering processing power of 2,250 trillion operations per second (TOPS), the highest among production cars available in the market. By comparison, that number for the Model Y and YU7 is roughly at 700 TOPS. Xpeng said it received more than 10,000 reservations with RMB 5,000 non-refundable deposits within nine minutes of the G7’s launch event. [TechNode reporting, Xpeng release, in Chinese]
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