China | Fork in the road

China’s super-smart Tesla-killers

Carmakers are pushing for autonomous driving’s “ChatGPT moment”

A Baidu Inc. driverless robotaxi in Wuhan, China
Photograph: Getty Images
|GUANGZHOU

Sitting in his spacious office in the southern city of Guangzhou, He Xiaopeng is in an expansive mood. The boss of Xpeng, a Chinese electric-vehicle (ev) maker that is one of the frontrunners in the self-driving tech race, says that autonomous driving is on the cusp of a “Chatgpt moment”. He points to the instant at the end of 2022 when, after years of development, Openai’s chatbot pushed generative artificial intelligence from the realm of researchers into the mainstream.

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This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “Super-smart cars”

From the March 15th 2025 edition

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