"Mr. Bao, what just happened? Was that video real?"
"Yes, it couldn’t have been rigged with remote control to fake the promotion, could it?"
"Mr. Bao, could you explain a bit?"
Before Mr. Bao could continue to elaborate on the the of the press release, the reporters in the audience had beco impatient and began asking about the video they had just seen.
Talking cars aren’t important—explain the "self-driving cars" first.
Those present, including industry peers and even specialized column journalists familiar with various new energy vehicle technologies, understood what it would an if the video they just saw were real.
It ant... today they would witness the global launch of an A00 class microcar with an auto-parking feature...
"Innovation breakthrough! Has autonomous driving entered the microcar segnt?"
"Dying company plays a stunning trump card!"
"Ai Dou New Energy’s desperate survival!"
Realizing the sensational effect such headlines could generate, the journalists felt like they had found the formula for traffic and beca eager to confirm the authenticity of the video.
The technically educated Xiao Peng’s eyes were practically bulging out of his head.
If it were just plain auto-parking, there were certainly three or four, if not seven or eight, technical approaches, and it wasn’t impossible to achieve similar effects if one spared no expense in cutting corners.
But what was strange was, why did the video repeatedly show "failed parking" and eventually a perfectly executed maneuver?
For a mature "auto-parking" system, this seed rather superfluous.
Unless... the other party was implying...
That this car’s "auto-parking system" had a self-learning function...
It’s known that the evolution of "auto-parking" technology can generally be divided into four stages: "APA Automatic Parking," "RPA Remote Control Parking," "Self-Learning Parking," and "AVP Valet Parking."
The "Self-Learning Parking" is precisely the cutting-edge parking technology of the third generation.
The distance to the fourth-generation valet parking, where the car goes after the driver alights and reaches the desired location by itself, is almost just a step away!
Even the Xiao Peng G3, set to be released at the end of the year with a similar automatic parking feature, is only a quasi-third-generation product.
Looking around the world, the technology that truly reaches the third generation is almost exclusively Tesla’s, and even then, it’s their high-end sedan.
It couldn’t be that a dostic company, almost out of business, could leapfrog in autonomous driving technology to stand shoulder to shoulder with Tesla?
That’s just absurd!
"Impossible! Cheating! This must be cheating!" Xiao Peng struggled to keep his world view from shattering.
"Heh heh!"
Facing the skepticism of everyone, Mr. Bao just smiled with inexplicable confidence.
He took out his phone and said into the microphone.
"Bajie, help park the car in spot number 1!"
[Okay.] A gentle chanical sound ca through the phone.
Then the next mont, the exhibit car on stage began to flash its hazard lights and, under the astonished gazes of the audience, started to back up at a relatively slow speed...
The stage was already marked in advance with several parking spots at different angles and orientations.
anwhile, the large screen behind Mr. Bao imdiately switched to what seed to be a projection of the car’s system interface.
The interface did not have the traditional cara views but instead, a 3D simulated scene.
A highlighted blue car, surrounding obstacles, parking spots automatically marked with numbers... even Mr. Bao standing to the side appeared in it as a featureless humanoid object.
Eventually, the car, with parking movents that would seem precise even to an experienced driver, drove accurately into the space marked with a "1."
While the audience was still in shock, Mr. Bao, feeling as though the demonstration wasn’t sufficient, spoke into his phone again.
"Bajie, I don’t like this spot. Help park in spot number 5 instead."
[Okay, switching to spot number 5.]
The exhibit car slowly exited the spot, changed its angle, and again smoothly parked in spot number 5 using a parallel parking maneuver.
Then it was spot number 3...
"Bajie, co and pick up now."
[Okay, please wait.]
After the car made its way around most of the exhibit stage and ca to a steady stop in front of Mr. Bao...
"Wow~" The crowd buzzed, and the flashbulbs started popping again.
Leaving aside whether there was any cheating, the ability to control a car to accurately respond to voice commands for parking and summoning, all with just a phone and without anyone in the driver’s seat...
This scene, in the year 2018 when new energy vehicles were just erging and not yet widely popular, was absolutely bursting with a sense of technology!
Even Tesla, the world’s leader in autonomous driving that sparked a revolution with its "Mao Dou" series, was at about this level...
Could it be that "this Dou" is catching up to "that Dou" in terms of technological prowess?
"This can’t be possible!"
At this point, Xiao Peng’s worldview was utterly shattered.
Not to ntion the standard of auto-parking just demonstrated, the advanced "mobile car-machine connectivity" and "precise voice recognition" alone were rare high-end technologies on the market.
They might not be the first to create it, but they are definitely at the forefront of technology!
The key is... such an advanced intelligent control system is mounted on a microcar that gives an impression of being "cheap" and "shoddy"...
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