Self-driving features will see mass-market adoption in Chinese cars this year, thanks to fierce competition among Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers that is driving innovation, according to a UBS analyst.
This year will see the “democratisation of high-end autonomous-driving systems” in mainstream vehicles in the country, Paul Gong, head of China auto research at UBS, said during the South China Morning Post’s China Future Tech webinar on Thursday.
Self-driving systems are the brains of many EVs. Tesla is still waiting for approval from Beijing to install full self-driving on its models sold in mainland China. At the same time, Chinese EV makers are embracing self-driving features as key benefits of their new models.
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The proliferation of self-driving systems in China will happen thanks to the country’s supply chain ecosystem, where some companies specialise in the hardware while others provide the software, Gong said.
A Tesla Model 3 using autopilot is shown driving on the highway in Palm Springs, California, October 12, 2024. Photo: Reuters alt=A Tesla Model 3 using autopilot is shown driving on the highway in Palm Springs, California, October 12, 2024. Photo: Reuters>
China has rapidly progressed from a market for local and foreign carmakers into a global “innovative hub” for new technologies such as electrification and intelligence, which is helping accelerate the adoption of self-driving, according to the analyst.
“Increasingly I argue [that] China could be the R&D [research and development] centre for global car makers,” Gong said. “You have the latest technologies from the EV supply chain, from battery types to software to autonomous driving to lidar. You can get everything.”
China’s fast-evolving car industry has seen the exponential growth of electric vehicles in recent years, boosted by government subsidies, with EV penetration rate reaching above 50 per cent since July last year. The move towards new-energy vehicles in China is “basically a single way of no return”, according to Gong.
To further spur sales amid ongoing weak consumption in the country, China’s National Development and Reform Commission earlier this week renewed a subsidy scheme that gives replacement EV buyers a 20,000 yuan (US$2,728) reward.
