XPENG launches their EV in Europe with Google Maps built directly into it ©Image Credit: GEEKSPINXPENG picked Munich for a reason. On Thursday the Chinese EV maker rolled out its all-new L03 — a "Next-Gen AI SUV Coupe," in XPENG's words — and not just for Germany. The car is launching in 64 countries at once. And it brought a friend along – Google.Here's the part that matters for anyone who's ever fought with their car's built-in nav. XPENG is baking Google Maps directly into the L03 for markets outside China, making it the first automaker out of the Asia-Pacific region to ship a car that's running Google's Maps Auto SDK. That means there's no downloading an app, no mirroring your phone, no squinting at a laggy screen-cast. The maps just live in the car.What's especially clever is that XPENG isn't handing the whole dashboard over to Google. The SDK lets carmakers build their own thing on top of Google's underlying tech, so the interface, the map graphics, and the way you interact with it are all still XPENG's design. You get the familiar XPENG map you'd expect, just with Google's traffic data, place search, and EV range math running underneath. Drivers keep the stuff XPENG is known for, too — voice control, and the ability to fling a screen from one display to another.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe energy piece matters more than it sounds. Anyone who's driven an EV knows that range anxiety is real, and Google Maps folds in energy estimates and trip planning so you're not white-knuckling it to the next charger.There's a bigger play underneath all of this. XPENG's driver-assist systems — the flagship NGP and the entry-level XPILOT ASSIST — lean on solid map data to work overseas, and the company is openly calling this Google partnership the foundation for taking its NGP (VLA 2.0) autonomy stack global."Over 2 billion users turn to Google Maps each month," said Jorgen Behrens, VP and GM of Google Maps Automotive, noting XPENG pulled the whole integration off in under a year.XPENG's L03 drivers overseas get first crack at the setup before it spreads to XPENG's other models.Read the original article on GEEKSPIN.Affiliate links on GEEKSPIN may earn us and our partners a commission.
