XPeng Co-President: China's EV Race, Flying Cars and Humanoid Robots

How far ahead of Europe and The US do you think Chinese producers are now? Well, think we are leading a few areas. I think in electrification, Chinese players obviously have the advantage of having, you know, strong battery technology capacity cost advantages in the automotive side because China is the largest automotive market in the world. But what's really driving the, I would say, competitiveness in China is also the fast evolution of technology. Hi, everybody. I'm Nikola Tangin, the CEO of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund. And I'm really excited about this podcast. Xpeng is one of China's fastest growing EV makers, but it doesn't call itself a car company. It calls itself a physical AI company, betting that the same technology that can drive a car, pilot a flying car and power a humanoid robot. My guest today is Brian Gu, Vice Chairman and President of Xpeng. Brian, warm welcome. Thank you Nikola, very happy to be on the podcast. Brian, what is Xpeng? Well, I would say Xpeng, first of all, is a technology company. But as we now dive into the depths of all things physical AI, I think we consider ourselves really kind of forefront of this physical AI movement. We are building EVs as you mentioned, it's one of the leading brands in China as well as globally, but increasingly we have broadened our products group to be including more areas and directions including robots, flying cars and other modalities as well, but using the same core. A lot of people think that an electrical vehicle is a car with a battery, but you say it's about the intelligence that's the differentiator, not the electrification. What do you mean by that? Well, that actually is what we actually have done differently over the years, even when we were a very very small startup, let's say about nine years ago when I first joined Xpenn, you know, time I think everyone is looking at starting an EV company, so the big pitch was electrified energy transition for automobiles, but even at the end we have told investors as well as our partners that we believe the long term differentiation is not with electrification only, it's actually in the intelligence. And that's why I think for us, you know, we have consistently focused on building a full stack approach on the intelligence areas that includes hardware, software, and now increasingly moving to the era of AI. So when you enter a car, you know, as a professional, how do you judge whether this is a great car from an intelligence point of view? Well, first of all, I think, you know, when you're getting to a car, you have to really understand whether the car can understand you. You know there's obviously various degrees of understanding. First of all it has to understand you personally, your behavior, your preferences, where you want to go to, the way you interact with the car, you feel like …