China's L2 Autonomous Driving Penetration Exceeds 50%, Urgent Push for Higher Levels Needed

On July 15, Zhang Yongwei, Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of the China Electric Vehicle 100 People’s Association, stated at the 2025 New Energy Intelligent Vehicle New Quality Development Forum that China's L2 level assisted driving penetration rate has exceeded 50%, the highest in the world. Additionally, the penetration rate of new auxiliary technologies, such as parking assistance, is also increasing rapidly in China, with some mid-to-high-end vehicles increasingly standardizing parking assist technology, which has also surpassed 20%. He pointed out that the Chinese automotive industry has indeed achieved a leapfrog in electrification, and it is now urgent to consolidate and expand the advantages of intelligent development in the automotive industry. If the pace slows down, past advantages may be overtaken. To address this, Zhang Yongwei proposed that from now until 2030, the Chinese automotive industry should accelerate the popularization of assisted driving and expand the user base, which is a critical stage for cultivating a smart driving culture and promoting low-level intelligent driving. At the same time, there should be a rapid push for L3 and higher-level autonomous driving challenge goals. Currently, higher-level autonomous driving has entered a stage of intense R&D competition, although it has not yet reached commercialization. It is crucial for which country or company can first apply L3 and higher-level autonomous driving technologies. Zhang Yongwei predicts that the two to three years following 2030 will be a time window for L3 and L4 to transition from pilot projects to large-scale applications, and this window is not long. The Chinese automotive industry needs to accelerate its pace—slowing down is not an option. Zhang Yongwei emphasized that in the era of intelligence, any company within the automotive industry must reconstruct its competitiveness, with the foundation of that competitiveness being intelligence and AI; otherwise, they may be eliminated from the market. As automotive enterprises transform into AI companies based on underlying algorithms and data, the series production of their products will also become much easier.