Xpeng Chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng said the company is confident in its latest autonomous driving technology, publicly inviting Elon Musk and other industry competitors to test the system.
The remarks were made during an interview with Chinese media on the sidelines of the Two Sessions, where He highlighted progress in Xpeng’s second-generation Vision-Language-Action model.
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He said the company’s new VLA 2.0 system represents a significant improvement over earlier driver assistance technologies.
“If the upper limit of past advanced driver assistance systems was 100 points, today’s new system can reach 10,000 or even tens of thousands of points,” He said.
Xpeng plans to launch a broader internal beta test of the VLA 2.0 system among users in mid-March, while the first-generation version of the software is scheduled for a commercial rollout later this month.
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The system integrates large language models and proprietary computing hardware, which the company says has accelerated development speed. According to He, progress achieved in four weeks now is comparable to what previously required a full year of work.
He added that Level 4 autonomous driving capabilities could be achieved soon as both technology and regulatory frameworks evolve. “With the advancement of regulations and technology, L4 smart driving is expected to become widespread within one to three years,” he said.
He also predicted that Level 5 fully autonomous driving could emerge within five years, potentially transforming daily commuting by significantly reducing or eliminating human intervention.
Interest from competitors has already been strong, He said, noting that the cost of renting an Xpeng vehicle equipped with the VLA system for testing has reached about 8,000 yuan ($1,160).
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Investment analysts have also highlighted the technology’s potential. In a research note published earlier this month, Morgan Stanley described VLA 2.0 as a “bold leap forward.”
A team of analysts led by Tim Hsiao said the continued development of VLA and physical AI technologies could strengthen investor perception that Xpeng is evolving beyond a traditional automaker.
Xpeng has long considered Tesla a benchmark in autonomous driving. He said he tested Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system again in Silicon Valley in late 2025 and described it as having reached a “reassuring experience stage of quasi-L4.”
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To motivate its engineering team, Xpeng has set an internal target for its VLA system’s domestic performance to match Tesla’s Full Self-Driving capabilities by August 2026.