Autonomous Vehicles

These things are everywhere in my neighborhood and even though I try to take transit (or walk) as much as possible, sometimes you a car is the best option to get where you're going and these are so much nicer than an Uber/Lyft/taxi. No surprise that ridership has exploded since they became accessible to the general public.

BYD are making giant strides to the point I believe they have a chance of making something good here, but it's way too early to tell. More competition in the space is good for everyone though.

It's ridiculous how comfortable Tesla are with abandoning early adopters. But the way that they flood everything with marketing terms is nothing short of annoying.

TL;DR: they're switching the software that handles highway driving.

XPeng renamed its Tech Day event “AI Day” this year for a reason. Artificial intelligence was at the forefront of most of He Xiaopeng’s conversations on stage, and the debut of the mobility company’s new Turing chip was also a part of the event.

The company showcased a new Turing AI Intelligent Driving System, powered by XPeng’s proprietary Turing AI chip, described as “a world-first chip designed for AI vehicles, robots, and flying cars.” The new chip features a 40-core processor and supports models with up to 30 billion parameters, delivering the power of three high-performance chips in one.

Xiaopeng explained that the Turin chip has already completed over 2,700 functional verifications in a mere 40 days and has achieved three times the industry standard for development efficiency during that time.

In addition to powering XPeng’s flying cars and humanoid robots (more on that below), Xiaopeng used the 2024 Tech Day event to unveil a new Canghai Platform that will enable full Level 4 autonomous driving. XPeng has already been promising fully autonomous robotaxis by 2025, and we now have a better idea of the technology that will support that, again, centered around its new Turing AI chip.

The company explained that the new platform would act as the previously teased neural network for XPeng’s new line of AI-centric vehicles, supporting driving (with or without a human in the driver’s seat) with enhanced safety features, 33x bandwidth, and 12x faster camera image processing, thus creating “a foundation for full-scenario AI-enabled driving experiences.”