XPENG said so itself in March 2026, in the Dutch version of its VLA 2.0 release. The system supports lane changes the car initiates, and more advanced manoeuvres, in line with the coming UN regulation number 171 on Driver Control Assistance Systems. The functions are switched on market by market, once the relevant authority has approved them.
That sentence is absent from the global version of the same release. It exists only in the Dutch newsroom, and it answers a question European owners keep asking: why can the car not do here what it does in China. Because the rule is not the same, and approval arrives one country at a time.
The rule has three phases
XPENG set the phases out on a slide from its own stage. Phase one applies already, and the driver must stay fully attentive throughout. Phase two takes effect in 2026 and permits hands-off driving. Phase three is still a roadmap and covers genuinely automated driving. The same slide put global delivery of the second-generation VLA at 2027, which matches what XPENG said in July 2026 about NGP going global in 2027.
The rule is written inside the UN’s vehicle regulation work, and XPENG has been present. The company has taken part in the working group on Driver Control Assistance Systems since 2023 and in the wider group on automated driving since 2025. In February 2026 it ran open-road demonstrations in Shanghai for the delegates, the only emerging Chinese carmaker to stay through the whole session.
The same update carried something more everyday, which European owners got immediately. XPENG reworked ACC and LCC, the two functions that hold the gap and hold the car in the middle of its lane, so it brakes less unnecessarily and stops making small steering corrections on straight roads.
What the European cars carry in hardware and software today is set out in the guide to driver-assistance hardware, and the NGP story has the timetable for Europe.
Images: XPENG
Sources
XPENG Netherlands: VLA 2.0 and UN regulation 171 · 5 March 2026
XPENG: demonstrations for the UN working group in Shanghai · 13 February 2026