- An Xpeng executive denied that the company plans to resume using LiDAR following a report that sparked discussion earlier today.
- The P7+ sedan, launched in November 2024, is the first model from Xpeng to drop LiDAR after several years of incorporating the sensor.
An executive at Xpeng (NYSE: XPEV) has denied that the company will resume using LiDAR, following a report earlier today that sparked discussion.
A screenshot of a chat shared by Xpeng vice president Yu Tao on Weibo today shows that the company's head of autonomous driving, Li Liyun, called the report nonsense and said that LiDAR will not be adopted again.
A WeChat account focused on technology, Zhiwei, earlier today cited a source close to LiDAR maker RoboSense as saying that although Xpeng is currently using a pure vision autonomous driving system, it may resume the use of LiDAR in the future.
This is due to too many corner cases in actual driving, according to the report.
An Xpeng insider said that Xpeng will use a pure vision approach in the L3 autonomous driving phase, but will use LiDARs as a redundant measure in the L4 phase, according to the report.
The report also mentioned that Xpeng is considering product line integration in the second half of the year and may reduce production.
Yu warned in his Weibo post that such false information will be handled in the future by Xpeng's legal department and government authorities.
CnEVPost first mentioned in an exclusive report in July 2024 that Xpeng would abandon the use of LiDAR in its new model codenamed F57 and switch to a pure vision solution similar to Tesla's FSD.
The new model, the P7+ sedan, was launched on November 7, 2024, and is the first model Xpeng had launched without LiDAR after using the sensor for several years.
Since then, the company had abandoned the use of LiDAR in its updated G6 and G9 SUVs (sport utility vehicles) and the updated X9 MPV (multi-purpose vehicle).
The Max variant of the Mona M03 launched in May this year and the new SUV G7 launched on July 3 also do not use LiDAR.
