At the beginning of 2026, XPeng's organizational transformation is more intense than in previous years.
On February 3rd, Wall Street News learned that XPeng officially merged its Autonomous Driving Center and Intelligent Cockpit Center strategically, naming the new department the General Intelligence Center. XPeng confirmed to Wall Street News, &#34;This adjustment is true.&#34;
The two departments were originally parallel first-level departments. After the adjustment, Liu Xianming, the former head of the autonomous driving business, was appointed as the head of the new center, reporting directly to Chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng.
To outsiders, this may seem like a normal resource integration, but industry insiders view it as a sign that XPeng has officially ended the dual-track R&amp;D paradigm of intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit that has existed for the past decade, fully switching to a single-track driven era centered on physical AI. This is also the direction many car companies are currently pursuing.
For a long time, the hardware and software architecture of smart cars has been divided into two high grounds: intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit. In XPeng's R&amp;D sequence, the Autonomous Driving Center is responsible for the &#34;hands and eyes,&#34; while the Intelligent Cockpit Center is responsible for the &#34;mouth and ears.&#34; Although this division ensured business professionalism in the early stages, the boundaries between the two are becoming blurred with the popularity of end-to-end large models.
Under the traditional distributed architecture, intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit have their own perception algorithms, computing platforms, and data links. This means that when a vehicle needs to achieve cross-domain functions, data must jump repeatedly between different departments and systems. This technical silo caused by organizational walls not only increases R&amp;D costs but also limits the system's response speed.
With the establishment of the General Intelligence Center, XPeng will reorganize its secondary organization around foundational models, infrastructure, and platform-based delivery.
This means that whether it is the decision flow of autonomous driving or the voice/visual interaction of the intelligent cockpit, the underlying infrastructure will share the same AI foundation. Industry insiders believe, &#34;Future intelligent agents should not distinguish between driving AI and chatting AI; they should all be super intelligent agents based on a unified understanding of the physical world.&#34;
Behind XPeng's organizational transformation is a grand strategic blueprint for physical AI. Prior to this, He Xiaopeng had officially announced that XPeng would be positioned as &#34;a mobility explorer in the physical AI world, a globally embodied intelligent company.&#34;
Currently, XPeng plans to use the same AI technology system to drive different forms of robots, including cars, humanoid robots, and flying cars, and bring them to the global market. Based on the second-generation VLA large model, XPeng is building a full-stack self-developed physical AI system covering chips, operating systems, and intelligent hardware to provide a technical foundation for this strategy.
The synergy brought about by the departmental merger will be directly reflected at the product level. The intelligent experience will shift from functional stacking to capability integration.
For example, when the system detects driver fatigue, it will not only remind the driver through the cockpit screen but also link with the autonomous driving system to actively reduce speed and adjust the driving route. When encountering road construction, the autonomous driving system will automatically avoid obstacles while the cockpit may simultaneously broadcast traffic information and even adjust the air conditioning and music, providing a coherent intelligent experience
This deep collaboration is also reflected in technology reuse. It is understood that XPeng's robots and cars have a software reuse rate of up to 70% in AI, with many key technologies such as perception systems and domain controllers being interconnected.
Li Hengguang, an analyst at Northeast Securities, believes that XPeng Motors has completed a path reconstruction from &#34;a new force in smart electric vehicles&#34; to &#34;a global AI automotive intelligent technology company&#34; over the past decade. Its core is not simply the expansion of a new energy vehicle company, but rather the construction of an embodied intelligent ecosystem that integrates cars, robots, and flying cars, defined around AI. With the dual drive of range extension and globalization, deep technical cooperation with Volkswagen, and significant improvements in internal organizational efficiency, XPeng is transitioning from a phase of technological leadership but profit pressure to a profit inflection point driven by mass market hits and technology output.
Currently, XPeng's organizational adjustments around AI are not an isolated case, but a microcosm of the strategic shift in the entire smart automotive industry.
Li Auto has also made similar adjustments to its R&amp;D structure, splitting its original autonomous driving team into three new teams: foundational models, software entities, and hardware entities. Tesla has announced an investment of $2 billion into X AI, a company under Musk, and plans to discontinue some models, redirecting production lines to manufacture humanoid robots, Optimus.
These actions reflect a common strategic direction among new automotive forces: evolving from mere car manufacturers to embodied intelligent companies.
The reason why car companies are flocking into hardware intelligence fields such as embodied intelligence is due to the advantages of the industrial chain. Li Jingtao, an analyst at CITIC Securities, believes that the core supply chain overlap between smart cars and humanoid robots exceeds 60%, providing a natural path for cost reduction.
Frequent organizational adjustments in the automotive industry are reshaping the competitive landscape of the smart automotive sector.
Currently, industry competition is upgrading from a simple technological contest to the construction of a full-stack AI system. Previously, car companies competed on who had more intelligent driving features and larger cockpit screens; now, the competition is about who can truly integrate these intelligent modules to form a super brain.
For those car companies that rely on externally purchased technology and lack full-stack self-research capabilities, the industry reshuffle may come more fiercely. The landscape of the automotive industry is still changing

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- In February 2026, Xpeng Motors announced the strategic merger of its Autonomous Driving Center and Intelligent Cockpit Center into a new department called the Universal Intelligence Center.  
- This reorganization reflects a shift from separate research paradigms to a unified approach centered on physical AI, aiming for enhanced integration in smart vehicle applications.  
- The change is part of a broader industry trend, as companies like Ideal and Tesla also realign their structures to focus on embodied intelligence, marking a significant transformation in the automotive competitive landscape.

XPeng bets on "Physical AI"