Xpeng Pres. on autonomous driving: Keeping our customers safe is critical

Xpeng Motors launched the P5 on Wednesday, pre-orders are now underway. Brian Gu, XPeng Vice Chairman & President joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the outlook for EVs in 2021 and what’s to come for the auto company amid the pandemic.

Video transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: This week's Shanghai Auto Show has been filled with all the glitz and glamor often associated with auto shows. And that includes, of course, a peek into the future of electric cars. That's where we find China EV maker Xpeng, which showed off its newest model called the P5. XPeng vice chairman and president Brian Gu joins us now. Brian, always good to speak with you here. The P5, that's your first sedan. Why was it important to get a sedan in the market.

BRIAN GU: Well, actually, P5 is our second sedan. Our P7 was our first sedan. But P5 will be different because P5 will be our first family sedan. P7 was designed to be a sports sedan with a low profile and aerodynamic design. But the P5, the newly launched one, will have a lot more space in both the passenger side, as well as the cabin side. So we'll actually have designed a lot of features that accommodates new-- you know, so the driver sort of scenarios in this large space, which we will hope to create something exciting for a smart cockpit.

BRIAN SOZZI: So you started reservations for the P7 yesterday. Anything you can share on how it's gone since?

BRIAN GU: It's gone very well. Actually, it has gone much faster, much better than the P7 launch about two years ago. So we're very excited about the prospect of P5, which we're going to deliver by the end of this year.

JULIE HYMAN: Brian, it's Julie here. The P5 also is going to have some more sort of self-driving features, if you will. And I'm sure you're aware of this sort of back and forth over a crash that just happened here in the United States involving a Tesla vehicle. You know, it's tricky when we talk about self-driving-- how self-driving something really is. So can you talk to us about the P5 and how autonomous these new future features will be?

BRIAN GU: Sure. Well, first of all, I think P5 will incorporate the world's first Lidar incorporated autonomous driving sensor package in a production vehicle. So it will have more sensors than every other vehicle currently on the road. So with Lidar, you will actually have more sort of data collected for depths or surroundings so you can see further and for see clearer as a vehicle. So that will give more redundancy to the already very powered sensor packages P7.

So with that, I think that we hope to achieve a much more advanced autonomous driving capabilities. In China, right now, our autonomous driving package allows car to drive on highways using autonomous driving. But P7-- P5 with the current Lidar configuration will advance that capability to city roads by the end of this year or early next year.

And also, just another thing just to know is that in China, we are still actually I would say not completely autonomous driving yet. You still require a driver behind the wheel, ready to resume control. So that's still required in the Chinese driving regulations.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, I was going to ask about that, that safety aspect, right, and sort of communicating with your customers what autonomous means and what is still necessary for them to do inside of the vehicle. How do you all think about that messaging?

BRIAN GU: This is actually critical, as you said, to really educate the driver to properly use autonomous features. For example, in our vehicle, we actually incorporate a tutorial as well as exam that every driver has to learn and take and pass before they're allowed to unlock the autonomous driving software on the vehicle. This is actually, I will say, the world's first sort of a driver sort of a license that automakers are doing for the technology. So for us, I think it's critical to have that tutorial lesson in place because you need to really educate whoever uses that future to know what is the limitation of those features and what they need to be aware of on the road.

BRIAN SOZZI: And Brian, also, XPeng created quite the buzz at the Auto Show, showed off a flying car-- or maybe it's not even a car-- a flying vehicle. What are the details on that, and when might we see that go into production?

BRIAN GU: Yeah, so its intent to be a flying car in the future. So we have invested in a separate company that designs and makes flying devices. And now we actually aim to combine the technology of XPeng with a flying device company to make flying cars. Our intention is to design a car that actually can drive on the road, but it can take off vertically and fly in a low altitude scenario, below 100 meters in altitude. And that's something we actually try to reach commercial testing by the end of this year. And hopefully, we'll have something to show to the public and to allow the public to test flight sometime next year.

BRIAN SOZZI: Wow, that's pretty interesting, Brian. When do you imagine a consumer in China would be able to buy something like that? And I imagine there are regulatory considerations here, too, as well.

BRIAN GU: Right, so I think the initial applications of this flying car will be probably more hobbyists, persuant to limited settings. But that will be made available, like I said, probably towards the end of next year. But we think that the low altitude economy will be brought and gradually opened up by the government in certain municipalities. So I see potential for that to be used commercially.

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, we'll leave it there. XPeng vice chairman and president Brian Gu, always good to see you. Stay safe. We'll talk to you soon.