On 12 May 2023 XPENG obtained a Guangzhou intelligent connected vehicle passenger test permit. The testing area covers all of the city’s general test roads, and a robotaxi service was to open to all users in the Huangpu district in the second half of 2023, hailed through a WeChat mini-program. Fleet size, vehicle count, price and any date more precise than the second half of 2023 are not in the release.
The car is the interesting part. XPENG writes that the test cars use the same hardware as the G9 customers buy: perception sensors, computing and vehicle control. The robotaxi capability is added on top as software. XPENG calls the G9 the first unmodified mass-produced commercial vehicle to obtain that kind of qualification in China. The superlative is the company’s own.
The word unmodified applies to the hardware. A couple of lines further down the release says the G9 has enhanced its capabilities for robotaxi scenarios. Both can be true once you separate hardware from software, but the sentence can be read as meaning nothing about the car was touched.
Perception runs on XNet, which XPENG describes as China’s first and only mass-produced bird’s-eye-view perception system, giving the car a live 360-degree read of other road users, signs, lane markings and drivable space. The direction is the one set at Tech Day the year before: as XNet matures, cars are no longer to be confined to areas with high-definition map coverage.
What it means for a European buyer
The G9 driving around Huangpu had, on XPENG’s own account, the sensor set that sits in the G9s owned in Denmark and Norway. The whole business case rests on that claim: that autonomy can arrive as a software update to the car the customer already has. In Europe the claim has yet to be honoured, and the current word is 2027.
The XPENG G9 page has the car, the robotaxi page has the 2026 vehicle, and the internal testing that year is the next rung on the same ladder.
Images: XPENG
Sources
XPENG: the G9 obtains a passenger test permit in Guangzhou · 12 May 2023