Real-Time Innovations (RTI) has announced that its Connext DDS has been selected as the connectivity framework by smart mobility and electric vehicle (EV) company Xpeng Motors for its latest production model, the Xpeng P7 intelligent electric sedan.

RTI says that Xpeng Motors will be able to offer “highly reliable, robust and advanced” autonomous driving systems in its second generation electric vehicles using RTI Technology.

Starting Q2 of 2020, Xpeng Motors will begin delivering its P7 vehicles to customers, and in the process will become the first Chinese company to use Connext DDS in the production models of autonomous vehicles.

“Xpeng Motors has a unique vision and has been crucial in helping RTI evolve and add unique capabilities to our technology,” says Bob Leigh, senior market development director, Autonomous Systems at RTI.

“Together, RTI and Xpeng Motors are jumpstarting the development of new DDS-based automotive architectures, and transforming the software design and development process to bring these vehicles to market much sooner.”

Xpeng Motors has spent the last few months unveiling the P7’s high-end technology and design features. The P7 is the first production vehicle to implement financial industry standards-compliant authentication digital car key technology, as well as the first to carry Alibaba’s In-Car Mini APP platform.

The P7 is built on the Smart Electric Platform Architecture (SEPA), and it will utilize the XPILOT 3.0 autonomous driving system, which is powered by Connext DDS, and enables the “progressive implementation” of Level 3 autonomous driving.

With the P7 autonomous system equipped with Connext DDS, Xpeng Motors can “efficiently and effectively” send and receive data in real time. Connext DDS also reduces risks, and delivers low-latency, high-reliability, scalability and security essential for distributed systems. According to RTI,  Connext DDS is the only framework that is deployed in hundreds of autonomous industrial applications. The company also notes that Connext DDS is capable of supporting autonomous vehicle development from research to production.

Connext DDS users can develop and reuse software across the entire network stack while future-proofing their IP from market and technology changes, thanks to the framework’s plug-and-play architecture, advanced DDS Security, and support from ECU to backend.

While developing the P7, Xpeng Motors relied on new features in RTI's Recording Service, which RTI says is the first off-the-shelf technology for reliable and non-intrusive recording, analysis and replay of real-time data, messages and events at high data rates and high fidelity. Users of the Recording Service can temporarily store the recording log in RAM and flush it to storage as needed, which allows SSDs to be used longer while in the field, and provides an “easier and more efficient” fix for system debugging.