Li Auto and XPeng Bet Big on "Car Robots," with Cabin-Driving Integration Key to Realization

Li Auto and XPeng are advancing the concept of "car robots," aiming to enable vehicles to actively perceive and serve users through AI. Both Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto, and He Xiaopeng, CEO of XPeng, believe it is essential to integrate intelligent cockpit and autonomous driving systems under a unified AI foundation. To this end, both companies have restructured their organizations: Li Auto has reorganized its teams following an AI-native company model, while XPeng has merged its intelligent driving and cockpit divisions into a new "General Intelligence Center." Although next-generation high-compute chips provide the hardware foundation for cockpit-driving integration, safety and stability remain critical challenges—cockpit systems can tolerate higher error rates, whereas autonomous driving demands millisecond-level reliability. Industry experts generally agree that in the short term, the two systems will continue to operate independently. Full integration will gradually progress from underlying compute platforms, data infrastructure, and toolchains, with safety ensured through hardware-enforced resource isolation and priority-based scheduling.