After the liquidation of US start-up Argo AI in October 2022, self-driving development is under a dark cloud. Rather than pursuing level 4 (L4) and above automated driving, Chinese carmakers are stepping up the development of user-friendly L2+.

At the IM TECH DAY in January this year, Shangqi’s luxury BEV brand, Ji Ji (IM), presented the L2+ usage status of users in 2022. According to the report, 89% of users had used IM AD (L2+) and 60% of them had activated IM AD in a quarter of their driving range.

Emerging OEM Xiaopeng (XPENG) also reported that 74% of users had used urban NGP (hands-on automatic driving in urban areas) during the Golden Week of 2023, and had activated urban NGP functionality on 53% of available roads.
A virtuous circle can be created if L2+ is used more frequently by users, helping to collect examples that were not envisaged during development. Chinese companies are likely to further boost the performance of automated driving through L2+.