BEYOND HORSEPOWER: XPENG P7 SHOWS WHAT’S NEXT FOR INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION
Electric automaker’s first sedan makes global debut with automated driving powered by NVIDIA DRIVE.
For decades, car owners looking for the latest technology features have had to wait for the arrival of a new model year. Now, their daily ride can always be state of the art.
The Xpeng P7 is an all-electric sports sedan developed from the ground up for an intelligent driving future. Introduced this week in China, the vehicle has an estimated battery range of 439 miles. And its innovative level 3 automated driving features are powered by the high-performance, energy-efficient NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Xavier AI compute platform.
The next generation of driving is one that is software-defined, which means it can be continually updated. Rather than focusing their efforts on engine horsepower, engineering teams are fine-tuning the deep neural networks that power AI-assisted features.
And even after the car leaves the dealership lot, it’s constantly improving. With over-the-air software updates, vehicles can receive the latest autonomous driving and intelligent cockpit features, so they stay on the cutting edge no matter the model year.
Using NVIDIA’s end-to-end offerings for automotive development, Xpeng is helping usher in this new era of transportation with the AI-powered P7.
Intelligent Design
The sporty P7 sedan is designed for safe, convenient AI-assisted driving. It’s equipped with 12 ultrasonic sensors, five high-precision millimeter-wave radars and 14 cameras for 360-degree perception. The car’s forward-looking radar has a detection distance of 200 meters, penetrating rain, fog and haze.
This redundant and diverse halo of sensors informs the XPilot 3.0 level 3 autonomous driving system. With NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Xavier at its core, the system is capable of automated highway driving and valet parking.
DRIVE AGX Xavier delivers 30 trillion operations per second of AI compute performance while consuming just 30 watts of power, making it the choice platform for level 2+ and level 3 automated driving systems. At its core is the NVIDIA Xavier system-on-a-chip, which is architected for safety, meeting all current safety standards and regulatory requirements.
Constant Improvement
Development of the P7 began in Xpeng’s data center, with NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure for training and testing self-driving deep neural networks.
With high-performance data center GPUs and advanced AI learning tools, this scalable infrastructure allows developers to manage massive amounts of data and train autonomous driving DNNs.
Xpeng is also using NVIDIA DRIVE OS software, in addition to the DRIVE AGX Xavier in-vehicle compute, to run the XPilot 3.0 system. The open and flexible operating system enables the automaker to run its proprietary software while also delivering OTA updates for new driving features.
This commitment to constant, intelligent development has put Xpeng at the forefront of the future of driving with the P7 sedan.
Author: Danny Shapiro - NVIDIA’s Senior Director of Automotive
