GUANGZHOU - XPENG said on Monday that its robotaxi service, XPENG YOYO, had been granted a demonstration operation qualification for intelligent connected vehicles by the city of Guangzhou, clearing it to run Level 4 robotaxi trial operations across the entire city.
The approval moves the Chinese automaker's robotaxi program from technology validation toward testing real operations and a business model, the company said, according to the financial news service Cailian Press. It does not open the service to everyone. Candice Yuan, who heads XPENG's robotaxi business, said on Weibo that the company would keep admitting riders through invitation codes in the early phase and widen coverage step by step while ensuring safety, CnEVPost reported.
XPENG named the service YOYO on Oct. 8 and opened invitation sign-ups at the time, Driverless.news reported. Monday's qualification gives that invitation program a citywide footprint and a formal basis for carrying the public.
The company has moved quickly this year. It received a permit for intelligent connected vehicle road testing in Guangzhou in January, set up a dedicated robotaxi division in March and rolled its first production robotaxi off the line in May. In July, He Xiaopeng, the chairman and chief executive, became the first passenger to ride through the full process, from booking online to being dropped off. By August, he said on an earnings call, the robotaxis had completed more than 2,000 internal test rides in Guangzhou.
XPENG has said it aims to carry passengers without safety drivers next year, the auto industry outlet Gasgoo reported. Mr. He said in August that the company had finished building a cloud platform for remote takeover of its vehicles.
The YOYO robotaxi is built on XPENG's flagship GX sport utility vehicle. It carries four of the company's in-house Turing AI chips, which XPENG says deliver 3,000 TOPS of effective computing power, and runs its second-generation Vision-Language-Action model. The company says the system relies on cameras rather than lidar or high-definition maps.
XPENG has cast itself as a technology supplier rather than a fleet operator. It plans to work with ride-hailing platforms in China and abroad from 2027, earning money from vehicle sales, technology services and a share of ride revenue, and it sees the robotaxi as a way to sell its vehicle platform, driving software and AI to partners, the Shanghai Securities News reported.