Asia Tech Wire (Jan 31) -- Xpeng Inc. (XPEV:NYSE) Chairman and CEO Xiaopeng He revealed on Tuesday that the Chinese electric car maker invests 3.5 billion yuan ($487.5 million) a year into its smart driving business.

He said at an event that in the darkest hour, Xpeng's investment in smart driving remains "unabated", with its AI research and development, data and operations teams focusing on autonomous driving reaching more than 3,000 people, and an annual investment of 3.5 billion yuan in research and development.

Smart driving is 10 times safer than human driving, he said. In 2023, when Xpeng car owners turn on smart driving, the average accident rate per million kilometres is about one-tenth of that in the manual driving state.

Xpeng plans to achieve full coverage of XNGP, the company's latest advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS), on the road network of major cities in China within 2024, and start developing high-speed NGP (Navigation Guided Pilot) for the world, and XNGP for the world in 2025.

In the future, the automaker will push for end-to-end AI large models to fully deploy into cars, and to benchmark Google's self-driving unit Waymo in terms of mobility experience in core areas.