XPeng G6 Driver Attention Warning Keeps Going Off? What the Manual Says (and What It Leaves Out)

If your XPeng G6 keeps flashing a “driver attention” or “drowsiness” warning when you’re wide awake, you’re not imagining it — and you’re not alone. Here’s the short version: the warning comes from the car’s driver monitoring camera, it misfires in a handful of well-documented situations, and on EU-spec cars you cannot permanently switch it off — EU rules require this type of system to return to normal operation whenever the vehicle is switched on (manufacturers may define specific reset conditions within the regulation’s limits; the G6’s exact reset behavior is not verified here — go by your own car). What you can do is cut the false alarms down to a minimum. This guide explains what XPeng’s own documentation says, what it means in plain language, and where real-world behavior differs by market. (Scope note: equipment details below are verified against XPeng’s official G6 spec sheet for Ireland, MY25; specifications can vary by market and model year, so check your local spec sheet and owner’s manual.)

What XPeng officially says

XPeng’s official G6 specification sheet (Ireland, MY25) lists a driver vigilance camera and a Driver Monitoring System (DMS) as standard safety equipment. The system watches the driver for signs of drowsiness or distraction and issues a visual and audible warning when it thinks your attention has drifted. In the car’s settings menu it appears as “Driver drowsiness and attention warning” — owner walkthrough videos of the G6’s central screen confirm the menu item exists under the driver assistance settings.

XPeng’s documentation describes it as a safety feature: the camera monitors eye and head behavior, and the car warns you so you can refocus or take a break. That’s the official line. Here’s what it means in practice.

Translated into human language: how it actually decides

The camera doesn’t know whether you’re tired. It infers attention from a few measurable signals — how open your eyelids are, where your gaze is pointed, and how your head is oriented. When those signals cross a threshold for long enough, you get the warning.

That inference is where the false alarms come from. The following are situations owners and reviewers have reported triggering a warning when nothing was wrong (each is a reported case, not a statistical ranking):

• Smaller or hooded eyes. This is the best-documented false-positive pattern. In 2022, XPeng owners in China publicly complained that the system read their naturally narrower eye openings as closed eyes and flagged them as distracted — in some cases deducting points from XPeng’s smart-driving score. One owner posted his deduction record on Weibo insisting he was “not asleep, just small-eyed.” NIO has since publicly researched ways to reduce false warnings for small-eyed drivers, which tells you this is an industry-wide weakness of camera-based DMS, not an XPeng-only bug.
• Yawning or stretching. An Australian G6 owner reported that the camera warns him with a drowsiness alert whenever he yawns — “sometimes it alerts unnecessarily,” though he rated it far better than the lane-departure nags in the Atto 3, Model Y and MG he’d rented.
• Looking away from straight ahead. Checking mirrors, glancing at the centre screen, or turning to talk to a passenger can all look like “distraction” to a camera that mainly measures gaze direction.
• Sunglasses and low light. Dark lenses can block the camera’s view of your eyes. Interestingly, UK reviewers found the G6’s attention monitoring “especially effective in compensating for sunglasses” — so XPeng’s calibration handles this better than many rivals, but very dark tints or extreme angles can still confuse it.

The key insight — stated as our assessment, not as XPeng-confirmed engineering: a false “distracted” warning is consistent with the camera not seeing your eyes properly, rather than proof the system is broken. That distinction decides what you should do about it.

What you can actually do: the false-alarm checklist

Work through these before assuming anything is faulty:

1. Check your seating and wheel position. The camera needs a clear, fairly straight-on view of your face. If you sit very low, very reclined, or hold the wheel in a way that shadows your face, the camera’s view degrades and false warnings rise. Adjust so your face is visible — small changes help more than you’d expect.
2. Keep the camera’s view unobstructed. Check your owner’s manual for the vigilance camera’s exact location, and keep that area clean and free of stickers, dust, or mounts that could block its view of the driver.
3. Know your trigger patterns. If warnings cluster around specific moments — checking the blind spot before a lane change, looking at the centre screen for navigation — that’s the gaze-direction logic doing its job a little too eagerly, not a fault.
4. Check the setting itself. Open the driver assistance settings and look at “Driver drowsiness and attention warning.” Note what it reverts to after you restart the car — which brings us to the part most owners don’t expect.
5. Don’t chase a permanent “off” on an EU-spec car. The regulation doesn’t allow one — see the next section.

The part nobody tells you: in the EU, it’s the regulation

Since July 2024, the EU’s General Safety Regulation has required every new car sold in the EU to include a driver drowsiness and attention warning (DDAW) system. The framework regulation is (EU) 2019/2144; the detailed technical requirement that matters here is in Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/1341: a DDAW system must not be possible for the driver to manually switch off, and it must be in normal operation mode at each activation of the vehicle master control switch. The regulation requires the system to be in normal operation mode at each activation of the vehicle master control switch; the manufacturer may condition this reset on the driver door having been opened or the vehicle having been off for no more than 15 minutes (Annex, points 3.1.1–3.1.3). Either way, the driver cannot keep the system itself switched off — though the warning for the current drive may be muted. The G6’s exact reset implementation is not verified here — check your own car.

One honesty note: we have matched the G6’s camera-based attention warning to the DDAW category based on its described function; we were unable to verify the owner’s manual wording page by page. If you want certainty for your exact car, the owner’s manual that came with it is the authority.

A further stage of the framework (advanced driver distraction warning, ADDW, under (EU) 2023/2590) takes effect in July 2026, so these systems are getting stricter, not looser.

Market differences matter here:

• EU: The regulation requires the system to return to normal operation when the vehicle is switched on (subject to manufacturer-defined reset conditions the regulation permits). This is the system working as designed — not a defect — and as the driver, you cannot keep the system itself switched off — the DDAW rules ((EU) 2021/1341) do not allow the driver to manually deactivate the system itself, though muting the warning for the current drive is permitted; the newer ADDW rules ((EU) 2023/2590) instead allow the manufacturer to offer a way to switch off the warning or the system. Caveat: mapping the G6’s camera-based warning to the DDAW/ADDW categories is our functional reading — the exact correspondence for your car’s market version needs checking against the local owner’s manual, and that mapping is not yet complete in this article.
• Northern Ireland: follows the EU type-approval requirements, so expect EU-like behavior.
• Great Britain: the UK government has not made these GSR2 requirements mandatory for GB type approval. In practice many cars sold in GB still ship with EU-spec software and behave like their EU counterparts — but we have no model-level confirmation for the G6, so GB owners should check the actual behavior of their car and its owner’s manual rather than assuming either outcome.
• Australia: Reviewers of the Australian-spec G6 report that “the driver monitoring system and lane keeping assistance aids are far better than most and may be tuned down or disabled should you be so inclined.” If your G6 is an Australian delivery, you have options EU owners don’t.

If a salesperson told you the warning “can be turned off,” ask them to clarify for how long, and in which market’s specification — the honest answer for an EU-spec car is closer to “it will keep coming back: the regulation requires the system to reset to normal operation (the manufacturer may condition the reset as noted above), and as the driver you can’t permanently switch the system itself off — only mute the warning for the current drive.”

When to actually visit a dealer

False alarms in the situations above are normal system behavior. Book a service visit if:

• warnings fire constantly even when you’re looking straight ahead in good light with the camera’s view unobstructed;
• the behavior started suddenly after a software update (OTA updates can change DMS calibration);
• you get a camera fault or DMS unavailable message rather than just warnings.

Bring specifics: when it happens, what you were doing, and whether it correlates with an update. “It beeps sometimes” is much harder to diagnose than “it started after the October OTA and fires every 2 minutes on the motorway.”

The one thing to remember

Your G6 isn’t accusing you of bad driving — its camera is making a rough guess about your eyes, and on EU-spec cars the resulting warning is required to keep coming back. Adjust your seating, keep the camera’s view clear, learn its trigger patterns, and save your energy: the fight isn’t with the camera, it’s with the regulation. And on that one, the camera is going to win.

Related on AutoXCN: our BYD Dolphin driver assistance guide covers the same EU “can’t permanently turn it off” situation for Dolphin owners; and if you’re still learning the G6’s screen-heavy controls, see how to adjust the G6’s side mirrors (spoiler: there’s no door switch).

Sources

• XPeng G6 official specification sheet (Ireland): standard “Driver vigilance camera” + “Driver Monitoring System (DMS)” — XPENG_G6_MY25.pdf
• Owner screen walkthrough showing “Driver drowsiness and attention warning” menu — XPENG G6 Central Control Panel Deep Dive (YouTube)
• 2022 XPeng small-eyes false positive reports — Carscoops; NIO false-warning research — CnEVPost
• Australian G6 owner experience (yawning triggers, occasional false alarms) — The Driven
• Australian-spec DMS can be tuned down/disabled — GoAuto; UK calibration notes — Fleet News, CAR Magazine
• EU GSR2 DDAW mandate — framework Regulation (EU) 2019/2144; no-manual-off and reactivation requirement in Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/1341; ADDW phase (July 2026) in Regulation (EU) 2023/2590; plain-English summary at RAC
• UK position: GSR2 not mandatory for GB type approval — UK Department for Transport consultation outcome

Photo: XPeng G6 (2025) at IAA 2025 — Alexander-93, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.