XPeng Motors has merged its Autonomous Driving Middle and Good Cockpit Middle right into a newly established Normal AI Middle, signaling a serious organizational shift as the corporate accelerates its transition towards embodied intelligence.
The brand new unit might be led by Liu Xianming, former head of autonomous driving, and can report on to XPeng Chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng. In line with sources near the corporate, the Normal AI Middle is designed as a unified AI group serving each automotive and robotics ambitions.
The brand new construction will concentrate on foundational AI fashions, infrastructure platforms, standardized supply techniques, and product and venture high quality. Its AI know-how spine will help a number of software layers, together with autonomous driving, sensible cockpits, and robotics.
Earlier than the merger, Liu Xianming and Good Cockpit Middle head Wei Bin each reported on to He Xiaopeng. Liu beforehand labored at Fb (now Meta) and Cruise, GM’s autonomous driving subsidiary, specializing in machine studying and laptop imaginative and prescient. Wei Bin, previously a product director at Amap, is at present on depart, based on sources.
By consolidating the 2 departments, XPeng goals to centralize AI assets and set up a unified AI middleware platform able to flexibly supporting a number of enterprise strains. Sources say that AI and large-model R&D groups from each models had already been built-in forward of the formal restructuring.
Traditionally, the Autonomous Driving Middle and Good Cockpit Middle operated independently as XPeng’s two pillars of auto intelligence. Nonetheless, variations in improvement tempo and fragmented OTA updates led some staff to query whether or not the construction aligned with the fast evolution of AI-driven autos.
As massive fashions and AI brokers achieve prominence, the normal logic of sensible cockpit improvement is shifting. Business observers observe a rising development towards cockpit–driving integration, citing Tesla’s integration of FSD and Grok as a key instance.
Related organizational shifts are going down throughout the trade. Tesla not too long ago introduced a $2 billion funding in Elon Musk’s AI firm xAI and plans to repurpose Mannequin S and Mannequin X manufacturing strains for its humanoid robotic Optimus. Li Auto has additionally consolidated its basis mannequin groups and positioned each automotive and robotics companies beneath a unified {hardware} division.
On January 8, XPeng launched 4 new automobile fashions, with the top-tier Extremely variations geared up with three Turing chips—two for autonomous driving and one for the sensible cockpit. XPeng’s self-developed second-generation VLA (Imaginative and prescient–Language–Motion) mannequin will start rolling out to customers in March, with cross-domain capabilities spanning autos, Robotaxis, humanoid robots, and flying vehicles. The cockpit-side Turing chip is devoted to working VLM fashions.
He Xiaopeng has repeatedly emphasised XPeng’s long-term AI technique in public statements. In a latest social media publish, he wrote that cars and AI have entered an period of deep cross-domain integration, with sensible cockpits and autonomous driving converging into “tremendous clever brokers.”
XPeng goals to evolve into a worldwide bodily AI know-how firm, utilizing a unified AI system to energy autos, humanoid robots, and flying vehicles for world markets. In 2024, XPeng delivered 429,000 autos, marking a 126% year-on-year enhance.
Supply: LatePost
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