China's electric-vehicle industry has spent a decade proving it can build the parts; the next decade will be about making those parts work as one system, a senior Dongfeng engineer argued at an industry forum in Shanghai on October 23.
Zhao Chunlai, deputy chief engineer at Dongfeng Motor Group's R&D institute, told the 14th Automotive and Environment Innovation Forum that the country's technology leadership is shifting from winning with single components to winning with integrated architectures, according to a report from Gasgoo carried by D1EV.
Zhao recalled that a decade ago the industry was still solving the question of whether it could build an EV at all. The first electric car he helped develop had a range of just 170 kilometres (about 106 miles), and its electric drive unit cost as much as 35,000 yuan (about $4,900). Today, he said, the industry has moved on to asking whether vehicles are fast, good and reliable enough, with CATL leading the global battery market and silicon-carbide inverters becoming standard equipment in cars priced around 200,000 yuan (about $28,200).
But Zhao cautioned that leading in individual parts does not automatically translate into a better user experience. Intelligent driving, he said, is a system engineering challenge spanning perception, decision-making, execution and the data feedback loop, and only a systems-level lead can create a generational gap over rivals.
Three dimensions of systems leadership
Zhao outlined three areas where systems-level superiority will matter most. The first is the intelligent chassis. Citing a development plan for the 15th Five-Year Plan period issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other agencies, he said the technology architecture is evolving from coordination among the three core EV systems - battery, motor and electronic control - toward a full-stack ecosystem covering energy, chassis and connectivity.
The second is the system architecture capability behind software-defined vehicles. A smart car, Zhao argued, is defined not just by chip computing power but by the quality of its systems engineering. The third is the integration of architecture, algorithms, data and supply chains, an advantage he said is hard to replicate because it rests on the world's largest new-energy vehicle market and its most complete industrial chain, creating an irreplaceable environment for validation and testing.
Zhao said the next stage of competition will turn on how quickly companies can evolve their systems and how well those systems adapt to the wider ecosystem. China's technology push, he concluded, should move from breakthroughs in individual products to victory at the systems level, building the industry's foundation through innovation across the entire chain.
