There was a real buzz about the 2026 Paris Motor Show but it also felt like an event that came across as a festival of retro design and celebration of heritage from the European car brands. Chinese manufacturers, on the other hand, were all clearly focused on the future, especially Xpeng.
The relatively youthful tech company that just happens to build electric cars was keen to show off its new Xpeng L03 coupe SUV, but not content with a static display on their booth, they also had a couple of cars in the parking lot ready to take on the Paris traffic.
I’ve already experienced Xpeng’s intelligent driving system called Navigation Guided Pilot, or NGP, over in China, where it was hugely impressive. When I got the opportunity to take a trip around the traffic-choked streets of Paris, I leapt at the chance. This time, I wasn’t sat behind the wheel – that was left to an Xpeng engineer to oversee, but I did get to sit up front in the passenger seat.
From the off, it was obvious to see that there’s a lot of computing clout powering the system, which draws on Xpeng’s very own Turing chips produced in-house. The car seemed easily capable of handling copious amounts of data fed to it by an arsenal of cameras and ultrasonic sensors. This combined effort produced a result that effectively felt like the system was learning on the go and it needed to considering how many unpredictable things happened along the way.
Inviting media to try out Xpeng’s NGP on the streets of Paris was a bold move, but it also perfectly illustrated just how versatile the system really is. Xpeng’s VLA 2.0 is described as a multimodal AI driving architecture, which sounds fancy, but it was the system’s ability to cope with all sorts of unexpected activity that made it shine in the same way it did in China.
A lot of Parisians don’t seem to care too much about rules and regulations, so there were numerous unscheduled events along our route, which lasted just under half an hour. The way the Xpeng L03 behaved was impeccable. The system was also brilliant at pre-empting potential issues, and subsequently took evasive action without any bumps, jumps or jolts. It was super smooth.
The engineer sitting behind the wheel seemed so at ease with the way things were going that he offered to turn on my massage seat and switched on the seat cooling too. I was relaxed as it was, but Xpeng’s massage functionality in the L03 added another level of calm to the journey. This was my first time inside the Xpeng L03 on a run and it felt very accommodating on the inside so I’m looking forward to getting a proper go behind the wheel in due course.
Considering Tesla looked like the only other car manufacturer at the show letting people experience live demos of its intelligent driving system, Xpeng looked like it has little to worry about. Sure, Tesla is the bigger name and has a more prominent global profile, but Xpeng has a product that feels as good if not better than Tesla’s FSD, now also known in Europe as Tesla Assisted Driving.
Granted, compared to China there is a long way to go before either of these systems get the full green light in many locations. Nevertheless, Xpeng’s system left me in no doubt that it’s ready and able to take on any kind of city driving challenge, even Paris and its semi-anarchic drivers.
