Distracted Driver Crashes XPeng P7 on Highway While Activating Assisted Driving

A fatal car accident occurred on August 10 in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo, involving an XPeng P7 that collided with another vehicle in front, which had pulled over for repairs on the highway. The incident resulted in the death of one individual. The rear part of the front vehicle was severely torn and the front end was deformed.

A video of the accident shows a broken down car parked in the leftmost lane, and the owner seemed to be dealing with something in the trunk. Then, an XPeng P7 drove up quickly, without slowing down – straight to the broken down car. The person standing at the end of the car was directly thrown into the air, then fell to the ground heavily.

The P7 driver said: “The speed limit was 80, I set it at 80 km/h, and put on LCC (Lane Centering Assist). The warning was there before, but I didn’t know why it didn’t work this time. And then I was just distracted at that time.”

Local media outlet reported that a director from XPeng said: “It is verified that in the afternoon of August 10, Ningbo, a driver collided with a person checking the vehicle breakdown in front, and casualties occurred. The traffic police has filed a case, the store has the first time has gone to the scene to help deal with. We will fully cooperate with the relevant departments to investigate the accident and assist customers in dealing with follow-up related matters.”

XPeng P7 is positioned as a mid-sized pure electric model, available in three versions: rear-wheel drive long range, rear-wheel drive ultra-long range and four-wheel drive high performance version. In April 2020, the P7 went on sale, and on March 23, 2022, it became the first pure electric model to exceed 100,000 units in the mass production line.

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XPilot 3.0 is an important selling point of P7, with three main features: fully automated high-speed Navigation Guided Pilot (NGP), fully automated valet parking and automatic driving assistance on congested urban roads. XPeng mentions several times in the user manual that LCC is an auxiliary driving function, and does not qualify as automatic driving.