Tesla China Rival Following Musk's Playbook? Xpeng Drops LiDAR From Revamped P5 Sedan

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Tesla China Rival Following Musk's Playbook? Xpeng Drops LiDAR From Revamped P5 Sedan - XPeng (NYSE:XPEV)

The P5 was XPeng's first production car to incorporate built-in LiDAR technology.

www.benzinga.com

Chinese EV manufacturer XPeng Inc has unveiled its 2024 P5 sedan, but it has opted to ditch a key technology.

What Happened: The new P5 comes in two trims, the P5 500 Plus priced at 156,900 yuan and the P5 500 Pro priced at 174,900 yuan.

While the car boasts exterior style changes, the most significant shift is the removal of LiDAR, which was a prominent feature when it first launched in September 2021.

Despite LiDAR being adopted by several automakers for advanced driver assistance systems, XPeng has opted for NVIDIA’s Xavier smart driving chip in the Pro version, enabling highway NGP (Navigation Guided Pilot) functionality, as reported by CNEVPOST.

Why It Matters: This move may please Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has been a vocal critic of LiDAR technology.

Musk famously referred to LiDAR as a “fool’s errand” in 2019, asserting that reliance on this technology is a mistake.

Notably, Tesla’s autopilot and Full Self-Driving capabilities do not utilize LiDAR, instead relying on cameras and neural networks.

In 2021, XPeng’s Vice Chairman and President, Brian Gu, emphasized the uniqueness of the P5 as it marked XPeng’s first production car to incorporate built-in LiDAR technology. While the company primarily relies on cameras as its main sensors, LiDAR provides supplementary sensor capabilities, Gu explained to Benzinga.