IDC: Penetration of L2 Autonomous Driving in China’s Passenger Car Market Reached 23.2% in Q1

Technology industry research institution IDC released the “Q1 Report on China’s Autonomous Driving Passenger Car Market” on Wednesday. The findings indicate that the penetration rate of L2 autonomous driving in the domestic passenger car market is as high as 23.2%.

Specifically, the penetration rate for new energy vehicles has reached 35.0%, which is much higher than the penetration rate for gasoline-powered vehicles, which stands at 19.9%. IDC believes that with the rapid growth of the country’s new energy vehicle market, the penetration rate of L2 autonomous driving will further increase.

In the L2 autonomous driving market, gasoline vehicles account for 67.2%, and leading brands include Toyota, Honda and Nissan. New energy vehicles account for 32.8%, among which traditional car companies account for 10.9%, including BYD, GAC AION and Volkswagen. New auto firms account for 21.9%, including Tesla, Li Auto, XPeng and NIO.

Wang Bo, Research Manager of IDC’s Intelligent Vehicle Field in China, pointed out that the country’s autonomous driving technology has developed well, and tech firms have given full play to their technological advantages and actively cooperated with many automobile manufacturers. At the same time, carmakers tend to recruit multiple technology suppliers in the interests of supply chain security.

Wang also said that the future market needs more standard, modular and open autonomous driving solutions. Car manufacturers also need to optimize product life cycle management through digital means to cope with dynamic competition.

SEE ALSO: Baidu Wins China’s First Permits for Autonomous Ride-Hailing Services on Public Roads

IDC pointed out that the development of autonomous driving technology has been incorporated into China’s official national strategy. Its development in the domestic passenger car market is at the L2 stage. Although a large amount of car models have already exceeded the basic function requirements for L2 classification, and some models even have been equipped with hardware configuration sufficient to support L3 autonomous driving, laws and regulations have not been completely released for higher-level automated driving. At present, competition in the domestic passenger car market still focuses on L2 technology.

In the past year, the autonomous driving industry has experienced rapid development in China. Since last year, there have been more than 100 financing deals on this field, with a disclosed financing amount of nearly 60 billion yuan (9.07 billion). It is worth mentioning that not long ago, autonomous driving startup Pony.ai scored a taxi license in the Nansha District of China’s southern metropolis of Guangzhou in 2022, starting the operation of robotaxis in China.