XPeng Has Priced Its New Lidar-Equipped EV Sedan. What to Know.

Lidar, or laser-based radar, is a key enabling technology for self-driving cars. It's also expensive: Together, a single lidar sensor and the computing system needed to run it can run more than $1,000 per vehicle. Executives across the auto industry estimate that lidar costs would need to fall by half in order for the technology to be more widely adopted. That said, the new Xpeng vehicle costs considerably less than what consumers might pay for a vehicle made by fellow EV producer Tesla (TSLA). A Chinese-built Tesla Model 3, for example, starts at roughly 250,000 Yuan before government subsidies.