Xpeng Motors is one of the most high-profile Chinese electric car companies in the autonomous driving space, with a memory parking feature that has impressed many people. But legacy car companies don't seem to be sitting idle, as China FAW has announced a similar feature.

In a post on its official WeChat account Thursday, China FAW said the first version of its L4 valet parking system has been released with fully functional software, a crucial milestone on the road to autonomous driving development for FAW Hongqi.

The company claimed the system is the world's first vehicle-side perception-based L4 valet parking system, supporting both commercial parking lots and private parking scenarios.

(Source: China FAW)

With the help of the system, vehicles are able to drive themselves in parking lots and automatically find parking spaces to park. The vehicle can automatically drive out of a parking space to a user-specified location and can also memorize the user's parking route, the company said.

The system is equipped with a total of 23 sensors in six categories, including cameras, ultrasonic radar and millimeter-wave radar, as well as a high precision map of the parking lot, and a multi-redundant design that includes braking, steering, and electrical and electronic architecture to ensure safety and reliability.

The system's program design, control algorithm development, and system integration were completed by FAW's own team, the company said, adding that its team spent three years developing more than 200 functional modules, breaking through more than 100 core technologies, and solving nearly 10,000 problems.

(Source: China FAW)

Just yesterday, after about half a month of testing, Xpeng's memory parking feature was finally opened to regular users.

Xpeng said on Wednesday that it has started to push version 2.6.0 of Xmart OS to P7, bringing Valet Parking Assist (VPA), the industry's first memory parking feature that does not require parking lot modification, to car owners.

Xpeng said the VPA feature is like a personal driver it provides to car owners to serve them in the parking lot, assisting them in driving their vehicles from a set starting point to the end point and parking them in a memorized space, following a route set by the user.

However, it is worth noting that Xpeng says VPA can be used without the help of GPS and high precision maps, which is different from China FAW's mention that its system is equipped with high precision maps.

XPeng starts pushing latest system to P7, memory parking function opens to general users