Monthly Burn of 300 Million! Xpeng's Second-Generation VLA Set to Launch, He Xiaopeng Admits "Was Anxious"

Investing in stocks? Just look at the Golden Kylin Analyst Reports—authoritative, professional, timely, comprehensive—helping you discover potential thematic opportunities!

Daily Economic News Reporter | Sun Lei    Daily Economic News Editor | Yu Tingting

“Spending 300 million yuan each month to gamble on this, for over ten months straight, I was really anxious at that time,” Xiaopeng Motors Chairman He Xiaopeng said during a live broadcast on the evening of March 16.

Image source: Company provided

The “gambling” He Xiaopeng mentioned refers to the upcoming launch of Xiaopeng Motors’ second-generation VLA (Visual Language Action Model) assisted driving system, which will be pushed starting March 19. The official plan is to first roll out P7 Ultra, followed by G7 and X9 Ultra. Users of P7, G7, and X9 will receive updates gradually within this month; in April, updates will include the 2026 models of Xiaopeng P7+, G9, G6, as well as G7 Ultra and Ultra SE versions.

During the live broadcast, He Xiaopeng revealed that the second-generation VLA Max version will be gradually launched in the second half of this year. “The distilled Max version and Ultra version focus on different scenarios—Max distilled version emphasizes L2 assisted driving for high-frequency scenarios like highways and urban main roads; Ultra version is aimed at L4 era, supporting full-scenario navigation,” He said. The second-generation VLA is expected to enter some other Asian countries early next year.

It is understood that before the official rollout of the second-generation VLA, Xiaopeng Motors has begun test drives at stores and completed media testing. However, there are doubts about whether the mass-produced version will perform as well as the media test drives.

“After deciding to mass produce, the team underwent intensive iterations. Media test drives and store versions are ‘roughly the second major version, with over a dozen minor branches,’ while the upcoming mass production version is ‘the fourth major version, with the 28th minor branch.’ The iteration speed is fast, and each version undergoes strict testing, but one feature was temporarily halted—park and garage roaming,” said Liu Xianming, head of Xiaopeng’s General Intelligent Center.

Additionally, Xiaopeng Motors’ previous claim that “the second-generation VLA is five times industry-leading” has also sparked skepticism. Liu Xianming responded that this is based on internal testing results, not a single specific metric, but an overall experience improvement of nearly five times.

At the same time, Liu Xianming admitted that the current version of VLA still has some issues. “The occasional ‘not following navigation’ phenomenon of the second-generation VLA stems from the limitations of traditional navigation paradigms: past ‘accuracy’ was based on rule engines or high-precision maps, with each step strictly defined; whereas VLA shifts to data-driven real-time decision-making, which increases flexibility but also introduces path planning fluctuations,” Liu explained.

It is reported that the second-generation VLA will undergo multiple iterations in the future. According to He Xiaopeng’s preview, a key update within this year will focus on “dialogue-controlled driving.” Specifically, after reaching the destination, the vehicle will proactively pre-select a parking spot, and users can simply give voice commands (like “park next to that one”), allowing Xiaopeng’s AI assistant to understand the intent and adjust parking accordingly, enabling human-vehicle interaction.

Industry experts generally believe that Xiaopeng Motors has found the key to technological monetization by 2025. In 2026, the company hopes to replicate this path, using new technology to boost sales. However, the challenge lies in consumers’ limited understanding of new technologies, so He Xiaopeng still needs to continuously “translate” the value of the technology to users.

Massive information, precise analysis—only on Sina Finance APP

Editor: Gao Jia