XPENG Could Bring Chinese Self-Driving To Europe Sooner Than You Think

Tesla is supposed to be the leader in self-driving cars, but Europe’s next significant advance in autonomy might arrive wearing a Chinese badge. At this week’s Paris Motor Show, XPENG took its NGP technology onto the French capital’s roads, giving Europeans a chance to experience a system already familiar to Chinese customers. The company is targeting international expansion in 2027. Its executives sound increasingly bullish that adapting the technology to Europe will not require any wholesale changes. After trying it for myself in Paris, I can see why.

“We started generalizing to the European market in the middle of this year, and we have seen the rapid pace of our iterations,” says Dr. Xianming Liu of XPENG. “We are pretty confident about our technology.” The company is testing whether software developed in China can become a reason for European drivers to choose its cars.

After experiencing NGP in Beijing earlier this year, I had the opportunity to try it again in Paris. In Beijing, NGP, based on XPENG’s VLA 2.0 technology, is already a shipping product and the company claims it is a major incentive for customers to buy its cars. I spent 45 minutes behind the wheel as it drove round the Chinese capital city, and it was faultless, navigating complicated junctions, road systems and traffic with perspicacity and confidence. I only had to drive in and out of the car park. The rest of the time NGP took over and there wasn’t a single moment where I had to intervene or even felt the need.

The version of NGP I experienced in Paris wasn’t quite so ready-to-ship. An experienced test driver was behind the wheel while I sat in the passenger seat. The journey was shorter – about 25 minutes – and there were a couple of instances where the driver made very slight adjustments, in particular where the road markings had clearly been removed and the direction of a lane reversed.

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