At the 2026 World Intelligent Connected Vehicles Conference in Beijing on October 21, Huawei's senior vice president and CEO of Yinwang, Jin Yuzhi, outlined three major shifts in the "second half of intelligent driving" and reaffirmed that Yinwang will remain a supplier, not a competitor to automakers.
Jin noted that the industry is accelerating from assisted driving to autonomous driving. According to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, by September this year, L2 and above assisted-driving features had reached a 70% installation rate in new vehicles. The ministry has begun orderly L3-level autonomous driving access tests, and a mandatory standard has been officially released, set to take effect on July 1, 2027. Jin said this policy lays a solid foundation for the industry's development.
The second shift is a higher safety bar for autonomous driving. In the L2 stage, the driver remains the liable party in accidents, but at L3 and above, the system assumes responsibility. To build user trust, Yinwang began publicly disclosing its assisted-driving mileage and safety data earlier this year. So far, its assisted-driving systems have accumulated nearly 17 billion km, and safety comparisons with human driving are published on its official website.
Third, autonomous driving will reshape future mobility. Jin envisions vehicles that can self-park, self-charge, self-wash, pick up children, and even buy coffee automatically, fundamentally changing how people use cars.
Yinwang's role: 'electronic screws'
Addressing concerns about Huawei's evolving role in the technology ecosystem, Jin said: "Since its inception, Yinwang has insisted on being an incremental component supplier for intelligent connected vehicles, positioning itself as an 'electronic screw' to help automaker partners build and sell good cars, not competing with them. This positioning has never changed."
He outlined three areas of future collaboration. First, Yinwang aims to bring high-safety, high-quality intelligent vehicle solutions to more users. Citing the recent National Day holiday, Jin said Huawei's Qiankun ADAS (advanced driver assistance system) averaged nearly 80 million km of assisted-driving mileage per day, totaling almost 560 million km over seven days. To meet strong demand, Yinwang plans to invest nearly 20 billion yuan (about $2.8 billion) in R&D this year and maintain that intensity, according to PCauto.
Second, beyond deep collaboration with automakers on vehicle intelligence, Yinwang is expanding partnerships with ecosystem players. Recently, Yinwang signed a strategic cooperation with CATL and its battery-swap unit, Times EV Services. Vehicles equipped with Qiankun ADAS can autonomously locate, enter, and complete a battery swap in under 99 seconds, fully automated. This extends Yinwang's intelligent charging ecosystem, which already connects to over a million charging piles, into intelligent battery swapping.
Third, Yinwang wants to move from scale application in China to global value creation. Jin stressed that the healthy, sustainable development of autonomous driving requires deep coordination on global policies, standards, and regulations. Yinwang is willing to work closely with domestic and international automakers to promote mutual recognition of autonomous driving standards and build a shared industrial ecosystem.
