Inside XPeng’s Unmanned Factory: P7 Cars Ship Themselves

Today at XPeng Motors in Guangzhou, a convoy of all new P7 sedans rolled out of final assembly and drove themselves to the shipping yard. No standby drivers. No remote joysticks. The cars used on board perception, planning, and memory to read traffic lines, negotiate turns, and stop precisely where the logistics team needed them. It felt like watching tomorrow show up early.

XPeng says this limited area autonomy is powered by a Vision Language Action model that runs on the car itself. The new P7 uses 3 in house Turing compute chips delivering a combined 2,250 tera operations per second, so the vehicle can interpret camera feeds, reason about what to do next, and remember the plant’s environment without relying on a remote driver. Inside the factory, that combination unlocks a practical, low risk job: line to yard moves with no human in the seat.

The bigger story is what this means for production. Autonomous yard moves free people for higher value tasks, reduce minor scuffs during parking, and give every finished car a quick, automated confidence check. It is also a smart proving ground. If Vision Language Action can handle the structured chaos of a plant, it can grow into new logistics tasks, and, as regulations evolve, into features customers will use beyond the gate. If you enjoyed this look at where carmaking is heading.