China’s Xpeng Motors on Wednesday unveiled what it calls the world’s first AI-defined vehicle with the level of processing power necessary to bring Level 3 semi-autonomous driving capabilities to everyday cars. The G7 sports utility vehicle is also the first car featuring Xpeng’s in-house designed chip Turing, which is equivalent to three older Nvidia models the electric vehicle maker used, according to chief executive He Xiaopeng.
Why it matters: The G7, one of Xpeng’s three strategic models scheduled for launch this year, could become a key sales driver for the company as management expects it to be the most competitive SUV available in the Chinese market this year within the price tag of RMB 250,000 ($34,825).
- The success of the G7, powered by Xpeng’s custom-made AI computer, will also be crucial to the company’s aim to be among the first automakers to launch L3 autonomous vehicles in the second half of this year, once regulatory hurdles are cleared.
READ MORE: Shanghai Auto Show: Automakers navigate shifting smart driving market dynamics
Details: Xpeng on Wednesday began taking refundable deposits of RMB 2,000 on orders for its G7 which went on pre-sale at a price tag of RMB 235,800 ($32,847), saying (in Chinese) it received more than 10,000 such reservations just one hour after the vehicle’s unveiling.
- The top-end version of the G7 incorporates three Xpeng Turing computer chips which Xpeng claims will together deliver 2,200 trillion operations per second (TOPS). Xpeng said this would allow it to locally run a large language model with more than 30 billion parameters.
- The base-version G7, like Xpeng’s existing models, will come equipped with two Nvidia DRIVE Orin chips, which underpin Xpeng’s current assisted driving system, the XNGP. Each Orin provides 254 TOPS of performance. All the G7 variants will feature Xpeng’s newest head-up display with input from Huawei.
- The all-electric crossover measures approximately 4.9 meters in length and more than 1.6 meters in height, making it slightly roomier than the Tesla Model Y but a bit smaller than Xiaomi’s upcoming YU7. The single-motor car travels 702 kilometers (436 miles) on a single charge.
- The L3 conditional autonomous system allows the human driver not to monitor the vehicle constantly but to be ready to take control, according to the definitions set by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE).
Context: Xpeng delivered 162,578 vehicles for the first five months of this year, nearly triple that of last year. Beyond the G7, the company plans to launch a redesigned P7 sedan in the coming weeks, as well as its first extended-range hybrid model later this year.
READ MORE: China’s Xpeng to use own autonomous driving chip on par with Nvidia Thor: reports
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