From premium feature to mainstream capability: ADAS reshaps China’s automotive competitive landscape | Gasgoo Awards 2025 – New supply chain innovation cases

As technology evolves at a rapid pace, the wave of intelligence is accelerating the reshaping of the automotive industry landscape. As one of the core drivers of industry innovation, intelligent driver-assistance systems are moving beyond the laboratory and onto real roads, advancing from concept validation to large-scale mass production. They are becoming a pivotal force in driving industrial upgrades and enhancing the mobility experience.

Whether in highway ADAS, urban NOA, or APA solution, ADAS technologies are rapidly expanding their use cases and improving the driving experience. Data compiled by the Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute shows that from 2023 to January–October 2025, China's passenger-vehicle ADAS market has shifted from focusing on "availability" to "capability." The share of vehicles without ADAS/L0 fell from 53.9% to 36.4%, with L1 also declining, making driver assistance a basic feature. Meanwhile, higher-level functions are growing sharply: L2++ penetration jumped from 3.2% to 20.7%, and L2+ doubled. The quick rise of highway pilot and urban assist reflects stronger user acceptance and highlights that automakers now treat advanced ADAS as a key competitive differentiator.

In contrast, once-mainstream L2 features are entering a transition period. After peaking in 2024, penetration has dipped as users shift from basic assistance to higher-level, more stable and comprehensive capabilities. This shift is clear across price segments: penetration rose from almost zero to 11.0% in sub-RMB 100,000 models, reached 64.0% in the RMB 100,000–200,000 range, and is nearing 90% above RMB 200,000. High-end models are catching up quickly as well, with the RMB 500,000+ segment jumping from 45.3% to 88.9%. Overall, intelligent driver assistance is becoming a competitive baseline rather than a highlight, accelerating the market's move toward smarter, experience-driven offerings.

As consumer understanding deepens, market priorities have shifted from the mere presence of ADAS to its real-world performance. Automakers are moving beyond hardware-centric and rule-based approaches toward system-level capability and model-driven intelligence. The ability to achieve precise perception and reliable decision-making across multi-scenario environments will determine future competitiveness. Effective deployment, however, relies on a robust engineering foundation: mature data-loop mechanisms, unified software architecture, automotive-grade production processes, and sustained OEM–supplier collaboration. These elements ensure stable mass-production performance and enable continuous system evolution and feature expansion.

The 7th Gasgoo Awards in 2025 once again served as a key platform for showcasing China's latest achievements in intelligent driver-assistance innovation, highlighting progress in technology development, mass-production deployment, and engineering practices. Beyond recognizing corporate innovation capabilities, the awards also reflect the growing maturity and diversification of China's ADAS ecosystem.

Shenzhen Zhuoyu Technology Co., Ltd. showcased its "ClixPilot" intelligent driving system, a mass-production paradigm built on the integration of end-to-end world models and a fully self-developed software stack. Leveraging a compute platform ranging from 32 to 1000 TOPS and flexible sensor configurations, Zhuoyu brings "high-cognition" models into production vehicles, enabling stronger reasoning capabilities in complex urban environments.

Its inertial-vision fusion, LiDAR-camera fusion, and automotive-grade controllers form a complete perception–decision–control closed loop, ensuring stable deployment of functions such as urban pilot and multi-level memory parking across different hardware setups. Rather than relying on hardware stacking for performance gains, Zhuoyu emphasizes model-driven efficiency, maintaining robust performance in long-tail scenarios while providing higher interpretability and safety redundancy. This approach offers an engineering-ready and cost-efficient solution for cross-platform deployment from L2 to L4.

DeepRoute.ai's DeepRoute IO 2.0 presents an alternative development path through its VLA (Vision–Language–Action) model, enabling vehicles to truly "see, understand, and reason." The VLA model links visual information, traffic text, language instructions, and driving actions, giving the system comprehensive traffic-semantic understanding. From identifying irregular obstacles to interpreting textual cues such as tidal lane signs, and even executing natural-language driving commands, the system functions more like an intelligent driving assistant with traffic commonsense.

More importantly, VLA incorporates a Chain-of-Thought reasoning process, allowing the vehicle's decision-making steps to be displayed transparently, significantly enhancing system explainability and user trust. Its defensive-driving strategy further strengthens long-horizon reasoning and safety redundancy. With its solution expected to be installed on more than 200,000 mass-production vehicles by the end of 2025, DeepRoute.ai is accelerating the transition of intelligent driving toward a new stage defined by cognition and semantic understanding.

Looking ahead, ADAS solutions are set to follow two key trends. First, software–hardware integration: leading automakers and suppliers will adopt end-to-end solutions combining in-house AI chips, proprietary algorithms, and cloud-based large models for deeper stack-wide optimization. Second, full-scenario capability: ADAS will extend beyond limited contexts to provide advanced support across underground parking, urban roads, and highways, enabling a smarter, more comprehensive, and safer mobility experience.

With the theme "Embrace Change, Drive Innovation," Gasgoo reaffirmed its mission to "discover great companies, promote great technologies, and empower automotive professionals." This year's awards spotlighted ten key domains driving the future of mobility—ranging from ADAS/AD, smart cockpit, automotive software & AI, powertrain and EV charging & battery swap, thermal management, intelligent chassis, body and interior & exterior, automotive-grade chips, new materials, and intelligent manufacturing & equipment. The awards not only reflect Gasgoo's insight into emerging industry trends but also serve as recognition of the visionaries who are reshaping the technological foundation of China's automotive future.