The co-founder and president of XPeng Motors, Xia Heng, spoke at the 2nd EICV Industry Innovation Summit in Shanghai. The summit was organized and sponsored by EqualOcean.
The co-founder and president of XPeng Motors (小鹏汽车), Xia Heng (夏珩), spoke at the ‘New Kinetic Era·GIIS 2019 Intelligent Network Industry Innovation Summit’, in Shanghai. The summit was organized and sponsored by EqualOcean. Several industry leaders and experts spoke at and participated in the summit.
During the speech; he touched upon several intriguing facts and predictions on near-future of the automobile industry, as well as contemporary trends. The president revealed his vision on intelligent vehicle control systems, EVs and smart manufacturing system of XPeng Motors.
He introduced a concept called "intelligent interaction";
"How do we define intelligent interaction? We know that intelligent interaction is not a simple cloud recognition or a wide touch screen. The intelligent interaction we define is based on a powerful visual and auditory feedback capabilities, and deep learning powered UI&UE with AI in the whole process. Through face recognition, it can easily understand the overall mood of the car owner and some of his/her current health conditions. We installed an in-vehicle camera; this camera can quickly identify the owner by face recognition. After knowing the owner; XPeng can also understand the position driver likes to seat, the music he likes to listen, and imports all the driving behaviour data into our car. As driver interacts with it, it understands him better. It knows his face, voice and character. A complete fellow traveller."
Xia Heng stated that they are about to create a fully personalised, intelligent car. He has also revealed the intelligent manufacturing organisation of XPeng.
"XPeng's current global R&D layout is as follows; an R&D centre in Guangzhou, besides, we have R&D centres for intelligent network related functions in Shanghai, Beijing and Silicon Valley. What's more; we also have two production bases in Zhengzhou Haima and a visual centre in Guangzhou."
Unlike some other Chinese EV and autonomous car makers; XPeng has not yet met with an administrative crisis within its executive team. (See these articles for more) On the contrary, the company is managed by the industry leaders who are well known with a prestigious professional background.
"We are a team of soft and hard skilled employees. XPeng has around 3,500 employees, and more than 2,000 of us are in the R&D team. The team of nearly 1,000 is invested in all of our autonomous driving, intelligent network, intelligent electric and other new intelligent systems. Why are we investing such a large R&D force to do this? Because, we know that only deep self-independent research can make our unique impact throughout the development process, and make our UI and UE best in a car, ever."
