Shanghai (ZXZC)- XPeng Inc. officially apologized on Tuesday for its Shanghai sales shops' illegal collection of human face photos which raise the public's concerns about personal data security.

The apology came after a local media channel reported that Shanghai XPeng Motor Sales Service Co.,Ltd. was fined 100,000 yuan ($15,720) by the Xuhui District Administration for Market Regulation for buying cameras and installing them in sales outlets to gather human facial recognition data.

According to the report, XPeng's Shanghai sales shops collected a total of 431,623 human facial photos between Jan. and Jun. without receiving consumers' consent.

The startup said its Shanghai sales shops intend to better serve consumers by collecting and analyzing the showroom traffic and other data. The purchase and misuse of the cameras resulted from the branch's unfamiliarity with relevant laws and regulations.

XPeng expressed its thorough obedience to the administrative penalty and said it had removed all data collection devices before the authority came to shops for supervision on March 18. In addition, the facial recognition data collected and analyzed by the third-party software supplier ulucu have already been deleted, the company said.

Meanwhile, XPeng emphasized that it has never leaked or illegally used consumers' personal information. It only wanted to take reference to such numerical data as shop traffic volume to analyze operation performance.