The most comprehensive OTA upgrade in the company’s history
Xpeng Motors recently released a major over-the-air update for its P7 customers that added over 40 new functions and more than 200 optimized features. It was the most comprehensive OTA upgrade in the company’s six-year history.
With the largest number of new and optimized functions, the upgrade will deliver a new version of XPeng’s operating system, Xmart OS 2.5.0, to XPeng P7 customers in China
The new functions and features in Xmart 2.5.0 version covers multiple modules, including autonomous driving assistance, full-scenario voice assistance, smart audio and music cockpit, in-car App ecosystem, and personalized settings. Xpeng has been consistently pushing out updates for the P7 and since its launch in April 2020, thirty-one new functions have been added through five major OTA updates to date.
Last week we reported on Xpeng’s Navigation Guided Pilot public beta version which is one of the main new functions in this OTA upgrade. Navigation Guided Pilot requires XPILOT 3.0 – XPeng’s autonomous driving assistance system – and is currently only available in P7 Premium and P7 Wing vehicles.
Navigation Guided Pilot (NGP) conducts automatic navigation assisted driving from point A to B based on the navigation route set by the driver, which is available on Chinese highways covered by high-precision maps. It’s Xpeng’s version of Tesla’s Autopilot system.
The key functions of NGP include:
- Automatic lane changing and overtaking
- Automatic optimization of lane choices
- Automatic speed limit adjustment
- Automatic highway ramp entering and exiting
- Automatic switching of highways
- Automatic collision avoidance while changing lanes
- Automatic identification and avoidance of obstacles such as construction sites, traffic cones, trucks, and stationary vehicles
- Night driving overtaking warning
Xpeng tells us that with this update, the P7 will become the first mass-produced vehicle with a Surrounding Reality display for navigation assisted autonomous driving. When the NGP is in use, the center display screen will show a 360-degree surround view with a simulated rendering of the surroundings, including speed limit warnings, safety warnings, and real-time traffic status updates.
Xpeng uses Amap’s 3rd-generation in-car navigation system to empower the P7 with artificial intelligence visual technology and high-precision maps to provide highly accurate lane-level navigation.
The OTA upgrade will also launch a series of active safety driving assist features in the XPILOT system, including:
- Forward Collision Warning (FCW)
- Rear Collision Warning (RCW)
- Lane Departure Warning (LDW)
- Door Opening Collision Warning (DOW)
- Rear Lateral Vehicle Warning (RCTA)
- Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB)
- Traffic Sign Recognition (TSR)
The OTA upgrade also includes improvements to XPeng’s automatic parking features. InsideEVs had a chance to try out Xpeng’s previous automatic parking feature in a 2019 visit to the company’s headquarters in Guangzhou and we were very impressed at the time.
XPeng says that compared with the previous version, the automatic parking success rate will be increased by 26%, and the parking completion accuracy rate will be increased by 7%. The side-front parking space recognition rate will reach 88%. The mobile parking assistance will be also added to the P7 Premium, Smart, and the limited-edition Wing versions.
Gallery: Xpeng P7
Improvements have also been made to Xpeng’s voice assistant to reduce its response time by 20% as well as to the P7’s music application. The music interface will undergo a major overhaul with a new optimized layout, better search function, lyrics display, music popularity ranking, as well as other functions to improve the overall entertainment experience.
We think it’s great to see other automakers follow Tesla’s lead with frequent OTA updates. Until recently, your car usually got worse the longer you owned it. Now with these OTA improvements, the vehicle actually gets better as time goes on. Now that’s progress.
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