The state of EVs and SDVs in China

I traveled to Shanghai, China for a business trip and spent the whole day learning about Chinese EVs and SDV-related software, touching various cars and hearing about the trends from experts. It was very realizing to see and touch what I had only heard about. It was a great experience to compare with the cars we are currently building.

In China, there are a lot of electric cars driving around, and the actual infra is really good. I've been testing a lot of actual infotainment functions in high-end cars, and the stability of the performance is surprising. I did a lot of voice control and the recognition rate and behavior was really smooth.

 The quality of the body, interior, and driving performance was so good that some wondered why it wasn't released overseas. I was very pleased with the car.

 

The infotainment was almost all Android-based and mostly using Qualcomm SoCs. A few used Kirin SoCs made by Highsilicon, and they all ran really smoothly. Responsiveness was pretty good, and the 4K video playback and controls were really smooth during our road test.

Below is a fun AI feature that I tested and included, and it uses GPT, which is developed in China. There are many other uses for AI, and the performance and behavior was very good.

 

I wrote this briefly, but I heard a lot of information and tested a lot of interesting features. Of course, OTA is not only infotainment, but almost all ECUs, including body, chassis, and autonomous driving, and the interior is going to a similar structure to Tesla.

We are doing frequent development and OTA cycles, and this is a story of continuous deployment. I was also surprised by the speed of development, and I think this is something we need to learn a lot. We say it's possible because it's China, but it's something we need to learn and apply.