China’s EV players are starting to compete on driver assist tech

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Huawei’s co-developed Aito electric car brand is now selling an updated version of the M5 model that comes with new driver-assist tech.

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BEIJING — Companies in China are playing up assisted driving technology as a way to compete in the hot electric car market.

Around the Shanghai auto show that kicked off last week, electric car startups and Chinese tech companies alike made several announcements about their driver-assist tech.

It’s not clear how powerful any of the announced features are — and whether Chinese consumers want to buy them. Current regulation also limits how much companies can allow tech to control driving.

But McKinsey estimates assisted and fully autonomous driving systems in passenger cars could generate $300 billion to $400 billion in global revenue by 2035. China is the world’s largest car market.

Among the recent announcements, Huawei said it would upgrade its driver assistance system for changing lanes on highways and parking — and expand support for city driving. The company said its new product, called “Huawei ADS 2.0” costs 36,000 yuan ($5,218) on a one-time basis or 7,200 yuan annually.

The tech is slated for initial release on an upgraded Aito M5 — set to begin deliveries in June — with future rollout to the Avatr 11 and Arcfox Alpha S. All three electric vehicles come from brands that already incorporate Huawei’s technology.

We expect delivery numbers to recover in the second half, says Xpeng Motors

Li Auto announced plans to roll out driver-assist tech to customers in 100 cities in China by the end of the year — a feature the company claimed would be “free for life.” That’s according to a CNBC translation of the Chinese.

Those and other announcements follow Xpeng’s rollout in the last few weeks of driver-assist technology to some users Shanghai. The tech claims to require drivers to do little more than keeping their hands on the wheel, while the vehicle travels to a destination in the city on its own, including stopping at traffic lights. Xpeng’s tech was previously only available in Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

Such urban scenarios are becoming an area of differentiation in China.

We recognize that, as a startup, the only path to possibly achieving autonomous driving is to follow Tesla’s path.

Maxwell Zhou

DeepRoute.ai, CEO

Tesla doesn’t offer its driver-assist tech in Chinese cities — a feature marketed overseas as “Full Self Driving.” Only the company’s Autopilot for assisting with driving on highways is available in China.

“If you don’t offer [assisted driving tech] by next year then it’s going to be really impossible to compete,” Maxwell Zhou, CEO of autonomous driving software startup DeepRoute.ai, told a few reporters last week in Mandarin. That’s according to a CNBC translation.

The company’s latest driver-assist software — used together with cameras and other hardware — is set to reach consumers this year, through passenger cars from “an established automotive brand,” the four-year-old startup announced in late March, without sharing a name.

The maps debate

Too advanced for consumers?

Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC Pro

Most cars with advanced driver-assist tech only operate on highways, while the few that can run on city streets are more expensive, said Zhang Xin, executive editor-in-chief of AutoR, an industry publication with more than 110,000 followers on the Twitter-like Weibo platform.

Consumers who simply buy the most advanced technology may find they don’t end up using it, he said. Zhang added that map-free driver-assist systems are not yet powerful enough to completely do away with maps.

Money in components

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