Thematic EV: Industry experts rate the key contenders

To gain a deeper understanding of China's rapidly evolving electric vehicle (EV) market, we conducted the second round of our proprietary EV poll of 95 OEM product managers (PMs) working for conventional car-makers and start-ups. We also organised a round-table discussion with a battery expert, a car digitalisation expert, a platform engineer, a PM from a local EV brand and a key opinion leader (KOL) in Shanghai. We also conducted an EV consumer panel in Beijing to better understand EV owners' driving experiences, pain points and brand preferences.

Our poll shows smart technology remains the core competitiveness of EV in the eyes of more than 70% of respondents (up 9ppts YoY). A growing percentage this year also chose autonomous driving (AD) as the core competitiveness. Compared to last year, PMs were less concerned about driving range but thought charging remains a major constraint to EV adoption. However, they believed charging would no longer be a bottleneck in 2025. After years of effort to increase EV demand, China's government has now shifted its focus to power charging and battery swapping, including offering subsidies for charging and battery-swap infrastructure and requesting minimum charging facilities in parking spaces, etc. As a result, by October 2021 the respective number of private and public charging piles had grown to more than 1.1m and 1m units. A significantly higher percentage of respondents this year also expected major improvements in EV technology and price by 2025.

Our poll suggests that close to 50% (46 out of 95) of respondents believe that by 2025, autonomous driving will have become the new competition ground instead of electrification. One AD expert on our panel viewed AD as still at an early stage (L2) in the mass-produced car space. In his view, mass production was very different from demonstration models—this was echoed by the PM of an EV start-up. In terms of a passenger vehicle's AD functions, there are mainly three scenarios: car-parking, AD on highways and AD in city streets. The road condition of parking bays and highways is relatively simple, which means they could largely rely on visual-based AD deployment. Light detection and ranging (Lidar) was critical for city-street AD, commented one expert.