XPeng wins Guangzhou approval for citywide L4 robotaxi demonstration

What Guangzhou approved

XPeng said on 26 October that its robotaxi business, XPeng Yoyo, obtained Guangzhou's qualification for intelligent connected vehicle demonstration operations. The approval allows L4 robotaxi demonstration operations throughout Guangzhou, not only on set test routes. Candice Yuan, head of the robotaxi business, said on Weibo that the team would keep opening access through invitation codes during the initial phase.

The approval does not mean the service is open to all users. XPeng said early demonstration operations will expand gradually through invitation codes while ensuring safety. The company did not say how many vehicles it will deploy, what riders will pay, or whether a safety officer will be on board during demonstration rides.

XPeng said the qualification moves the business from technical validation toward operations and business model validation. Yuan said daily operations will help XPeng refine its product and service systems before offering robotaxi solutions to partners worldwide.

Why it matters

The permit is wider than XPeng's August remote testing qualification, which allowed road tests with no safety officer in the driver's seat on designated Class I, II and III test roads. The new approval covers demonstration operations across the city, a step beyond testing on named roads.

XPeng is a late entrant in its own city. Pony.ai received a permit in April 2023 to offer public-facing, fully driverless robotaxi rides in Guangzhou's Nansha district, the first in the city, according to CnEVPost. XPeng's approval is for demonstration operations, with access limited at first.

The road to the permit

XPeng began road testing in Guangzhou in January 2025 and set up a dedicated robotaxi division in March 2026. Its first mass-produced robotaxi rolled off the line in Guangzhou in May. In July, XPeng connected online booking and automated pickup and drop-off, began employee testing, and completed its first internal test ride with He Xiaopeng as the first passenger.

In August, XPeng received a Guangzhou remote testing qualification allowing road tests with no safety officer in the driver's seat on designated Class I, II and III test roads. It also ran paid internal tests at 1 yuan ($0.15) a ride to check payments and service flows. By its 24 August earnings call, its robotaxis had completed more than 2,000 internal test rides in Guangzhou.

XPeng unveiled the XPeng Yoyo brand name on 8 October and launched a robotaxi page and a WeChat mini-program for ride-hailing, saying invitation codes would be issued to members of the public. The approval came 18 days later.

The vehicle

The robotaxi is based on the GX, XPeng's six-seat flagship SUV, and engineered to L4 standards. Each vehicle carries four in-house Turing AI chips with 3,000 TOPS of effective computing power, which XPeng says is the highest of any vehicle worldwide. The system uses cameras and does not rely on LiDAR or high-definition maps. Driving decisions run on XPeng's second-generation Vision-Language-Action model, VLA 2.0.

XPeng says the vision-only system lets it deploy quickly in different cities and that the same model bridges Level 2 driver assistance and Level 4 autonomous driving. The company said in August that its driving model can predict six seconds ahead.

What happens next

XPeng aims to carry passengers without safety officers in 2027. He Xiaopeng said the company had completed development of a cloud-based remote takeover platform. Revenue is meant to come from vehicle sales, technology services and revenue sharing from operations.

XPeng does not plan to run the fleet itself. He has said the company will act as a technology provider and ecosystem enabler, earning money from hardware sales, services and commission sharing while partners handle on-the-ground operations. In August he said XPeng would work with ride-hailing platforms in 2027 to reach key cities in China and overseas.

He has said the Guangzhou robotaxi business could break even on a per-vehicle basis as early as the second half of 2027. XPeng also plans a cheaper model designed for robotaxi service that year. No date has been given for dropping the invitation codes.