(Source: Xpeng)
Xpeng Motors' auto-parking feature was successfully used more than 260,000 times in May, the Chinese electric car company said Tuesday.
Self-parking is a key feature of Xpeng vehicles, which will automatically find a parking space next to the vehicle when it is driving slowly at speeds of less than 24km/h.
The parking icon will appear when the vehicle finds a space that meets the requirements as well as when the vehicle's location and surroundings meet the requirements for automatic parking.
At this point, the user can click the "Start" button on the screen and the vehicle will start to park. However, Xpeng said that the driver should continue to keep an eye on the surroundings to ensure that the auto-parking process is safe.
If the driver presses the brake pedal during the auto-parking process, the auto-parking will be paused and can be resumed by clicking the "Continue" button.
At the end of last month, this feature received an important upgrade, as Xpeng began pushing Xmart OS v2.6.0 to a small number of users, bringing with it the memory parking feature Valet Parking Assist (VPA).
The public test was conducted by open recruitment and targeted invitation, with over 250 users selected for the public test.
After updating to the latest version, the VPA feature assists drivers in driving their vehicles from the beginning to the end of a set route.
During this time the vehicle can automatically turn, meet, detour, avoid pedestrians and other vehicles, and park into a space near the endpoint that has been memorized by the system.
The center screen can display a variety of elements in the parking lot, including static elements such as parking spaces, speed bumps, bollards, and parked vehicles, and dynamic elements such as moving vehicles and pedestrians.
The vehicle can be alerted by voice and image, allowing users to intuitively understand the current driving path, target parking space, and next action.
The VPA function currently supports a usable distance of 1000 meters and the vehicle can memorize 100 underground parking lots.
The feature will soon be available to general users, Xpeng said Tuesday.
In addition to announcing the number of uses of the auto-parking feature, Xpeng also repeated the NGP user mileage data released earlier this month.
As of May 31, users had accumulated more than 5 million kilometers using the Navigation Guided Pilot (NGP) feature, 125 days since the feature was made available to users on Jan. 26, the company said.
