Xianming Liu, head of XPeng’s General Intelligence Center, told Electrek that the company spends roughly RMB 300 million a month training AI models for autonomous driving.
- Liu’s comments clarify that the company spends $500 million a year on AI model training alone.
- Unlike Tesla’s Elon Musk, Liu is not hopeful that cameras alone would ever be sufficient for vehicle autonomy.
- Unlike Xpeng, which has a partnership in place with Volkswagen for its self-driving tech, Tesla has yet to find interested rival carmakers for its FSD.
NASDAQ-listed shares of XPeng (XPEV) fell 5% on Friday, on track for its worst day since late April, after a company executive divulged the company’s high expenditure into scaling its autonomous vehicle technology.
Xianming Liu, head of XPeng’s General Intelligence Center, said that his team is spending roughly RMB 300 million a month to train AI models for self-driving cars, during an interview with Electrek.
“There’s a lot of jokes on the internet saying I’m asking a lot of budget from the boss. Yeah, that’s true,” Liu told Electrek editor-in-chief Fred Lambert. “He said it’s uh something 300 million a month R&D as for me to train the model. That’s roughly the truth… I do spend a lot of money. As a car company, you can never imagine such a big R&D investment because you can never make the money back. But our company is determined to be a Physical AI company.”
Liu’s comments clarify that the company spends $500 million a year on AI model training alone. This marks a significant expense for the company, which reported cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, short-term investments, and time deposits of $6.26 billion as of March 31.
XPEV Vs. TSLA
The remark came the day after Liu shared the stage at the CVPR 2026 conference in Denver with Tesla’s Ashok Elluswamy and executives from Nvidia and Waymo
Liu said the company’s latest vision-language-action (VLA) models have already reached parity with—or even surpassed—Tesla’s FSD V14 in early testing this year. FSD, or full self-driving, is the name of Tesla’s self-driving technology.
XPeng follows almost the same philosophy as Tesla in enabling vehicle self-driving. The system relies on vehicle camera data, which is used to train the system further and make better decisions for enabling vehicle autonomy. However, while Tesla has stayed clear of ultrasonic sensors and radars for its system, XPeng continues to use them sparingly.
“Camera is the best solution,” Liu said. More expensive radar and lidar are reserved strictly for redundant active-safety systems such as automatic emergency braking—creating an “orthogonal system” that operates independently of the main AI driver.
Unlike Tesla’s Elon Musk, Liu is not hopeful that cameras alone would ever be sufficient.
“We hope so, but to be honest, it’s not possible. We all make mistakes. System also makes mistakes. Even you can reach 99.9999%, you still have the chance to make mistakes. Adding another layer of redundancy definitely will help.” Liu said. “You’re not talking about chatting with ChatGPT and making a mistake — you just say, ‘hey, this is so silly, redo.’ You’re talking about lives.”
Xpeng’s Edge
China’s chaotic roads, Liu argued, actually give XPeng an edge in data diversity and corner-case collection as compared to Tesla, which is primarily training its FSD system in the U.S. “In China, you have a larger chance to get a corner cases and data,” he noted, adding that this gives the company more chances to expand internationally owing to the diverse data.
XPeng isn’t just trying to ship better driver-assist software; it sees itself as a “physical AI” company first and an automaker second. “We need physical devices in the real world to make sure we get feedback, we get data. Just like Google is producing Pixel devices just trying to demonstrate, ‘OK, this is what Android can do.’ But on the other hand, we want to make sure we are an AI company,” Liu said.
Liu wants the same foundation models to generalize far beyond cars—to robots and flying vehicles, areas where the company is also investing.
The Volkswagen Partnership
German automaker Volkswagen announced a strategic partnership with XPeng in 2023 to license the Chinese EV maker’s self-driving tech for its own China-market models. Tesla, meanwhile, is yet to find takers for its FSD system, a fact that Musk has often expressed frustration about.
How Did Retail Traders React?
On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around XPEV stock fell from ‘extremely bullish’ to ‘bearish’ over the past week, while message volume fell from ‘extremely high’ to ‘normal’ levels.
A Stocktwits user applauded Xpeng as a “solid company.”
XPEV stock has fallen 22% this year owing to weak vehicle deliveries and slowing demand.
Read More: WBD, PSKY Stocks On Track For Worst Day Since December As States Reportedly Plan Lawsuit Against $110B Merger
For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.
Read about our editorial guidelines and ethics policy
