China’s EV industry delivered two telling signals this week: at the Hefei stop of D1EV’s autonomous driving competition on May 17, Exeed’s Sterra ES again took first place and extended its winning streak to five consecutive victories, while in South Africa, Chinese automakers lifted their passenger-car market share from 11.2% to 16.8% in 2025. Together, these developments show how Chinese brands are increasingly competing on both software-defined driving capability and value-led global expansion. Behind the headlines, chassis control and high-fidelity testing are emerging as the next technical battleground.
Hefei Smart Driving Contest: Exeed Leads Again
The 27th stop of the second Intelligent Driving Competition was held in Hefei, with 11 vehicles tackling a demanding 30 km urban route featuring:
- 49 traffic lights
- 5 waypoints
- 9 test points
- An estimated runtime of 90 minutes
- A new parking-lot-to-parking-lot NOA requirement
The contest used a so-called “closed-book exam” format, meaning route details were not disclosed beforehand. That matters because it puts the focus on real-world urban NOA capability rather than route memorization. The course included:
- Construction zones
- Internal community roads
- Unprotected U-turns
- Busy commercial streets
- Narrow residential roads
- Station drop-off areas
These are exactly the edge-case-heavy environments where Chinese smart driving systems are trying to prove they can scale beyond highway assistance.
Final Hefei Results
| Rank | Model | Smart Driving Solution | Key Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Exeed Sterra ES | Bosch + WeRide | Fifth straight win |
| 2 | Exeed ET5 | Horizon | Third runner-up finish |
| 3 | Wey Lanshan | DeepRoute.ai | Returned to podium |
| 7 | Hongqi HS6 | Zhuoyu | First appearance, beat Huawei-line and Momenta-line rivals |
According to D1EV’s scoring, the Exeed Sterra ES was the only car to achieve a perfect score, while the Exeed ET5 scored 96.88 points.
Why Hefei Was a Serious Test of Urban NOA
The new parking-lot requirement immediately exposed gaps in system readiness. At the starting parking lot:
- NIO ET5T and Chery Fulwin T11 could not properly activate NOA
- The other 9 vehicles started successfully
At the destination parking lot:
- Zeekr 8X and Chery Fulwin T11 could not activate NOA
Difficult checkpoints separated the field quickly.
Toughest sections
Checkpoint 6: station drop-off area This tested the ability to navigate temporary parking, merging conflicts, and passenger pick-up/drop-off chaos.
Only these models passed smoothly:
- Xiaomi SU7
- Exeed ET5
- Exeed Sterra ES
- Zeekr 8X
- XPeng P7
Checkpoint 5: busy commercial mixed-traffic area This required safe path planning among cars, bikes, and pedestrians in a dense urban environment.
The following cars needed takeover here:
- Li Auto L6
- Xiaomi SU7
- Wey Lanshan
- NIO ET5T
- Chery Fulwin T11
Checkpoint 2: gated internal community road A test of whether NOA could function inside a residential-style road environment with barriers and irregular lane definitions.
Cars requiring takeover:
- Avatr 06
- Li Auto L6
- Zeekr 8X
- XPeng P7
- Chery Fulwin T11
This is a revealing detail because “campus roaming” or low-speed internal-road navigation remains one of the hardest real-world capabilities for urban driver-assistance systems.
Winners, Losers, and What the Scores Really Mean
The headline story was not just Exeed’s win, but the underperformance of some big-name smart driving camps. D1EV noted that Huawei-line, Momenta-line, Li Auto, and NIO-backed entries all finished near the bottom after repeated high deductions.
NOA scenario deductions
Models with no deductions in NOA scenarios reportedly included:
- Exeed Sterra ES
- Exeed ET5
- NIO ET5
- Hongqi HS6
- Wey Lanshan
Highest deductions:
- Chery Fulwin T11: 30 points
- Avatr 06: 15 points
- XPeng P7: 15 points
- Xiaomi SU7: 10 points
- Zeekr 8X: 5 points
- Li Auto L6: 5 points
Safety and efficiency deductions
Safety-related deductions included:
- Li Auto L6: 10 points
- NIO ET5T: 10 points
- Zeekr 8X: 5 points
- Hongqi HS6: 5 points
D1EV also said all 11 vehicles committed some form of traffic violation deduction, with the heaviest penalties going to:
- NIO ET5T: 12 points
- Hongqi HS6: 12 points
- Li Auto L6: 7 points
- Wey Lanshan: 6 points
In efficiency scoring, NIO ET5T lost 29 points, one of the most striking results of the event. Li Auto, Avatr, Xiaomi, Chery, and even Exeed ET5 also lost more than 10 points in efficiency-related scoring.
Key takeaways from Hefei
- Exeed’s software consistency is becoming hard to ignore
- Parking-lot and internal-road navigation remain weak spots across the industry
- Big-name brands are not guaranteed to lead in unknown urban scenarios
- Scoring now increasingly rewards not just completion, but smoothness, compliance, and efficiency
Chinese Brands Are Also Winning Overseas—Especially in South Africa
While Chinese automakers battle for smart driving bragging rights at home, they are also making rapid commercial gains abroad.
According to the South African automotive manufacturers’ association, Chinese brands raised their share of South Africa’s passenger vehicle market to 16.8% in 2025, up from 11.2% a year earlier.
That is a significant jump, especially in a market where affordability and ownership costs are increasingly shaping buyer decisions.
What is driving Chinese growth in South Africa?
The report points to three main factors:
- Competitive pricing
- Strong technology and feature content
- Long warranty coverage
SUVs have been especially important to this growth, helping brands such as:
- BYD
- Chery
- Great Wall Motor
The number of Chinese brands operating in South Africa’s new-car market reached 15 in 2025, up from 8 in 2024, and more are expected in 2026.
South Africa market snapshot
| Metric | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Chinese brands in market | 8 | 15 |
| Chinese passenger-car market share | 11.2% | 16.8% |
| China share of light-vehicle imports | n/a | 23.3% |
| India share of light-vehicle imports | n/a | 56.2% |
Even so, established players remain strong:
- Toyota led with 24.8% market share
- Suzuki and Volkswagen followed
This shows that Chinese brands are not replacing incumbents overnight, but they are becoming impossible to ignore in value-sensitive segments.
Why Value Is Now a Global Competitive Weapon
What is happening in South Africa reflects a broader shift in the global auto market. Consumers squeezed by household budgets are paying less attention to traditional badge prestige and more attention to:
- Monthly payments
- Warranty coverage
- Standard equipment
- Digital cockpit features
- ADAS functionality
- SUV practicality
That shift plays directly into the strengths of Chinese automakers, especially those that can package EV and PHEV technology with high equipment levels at aggressive prices.
In other words, software matters—but so does the ability to deliver a compelling total ownership proposition.
The Next Frontier: Chassis Intelligence and Testing
Beyond infotainment and NOA, another competition is quietly intensifying: the race to build better intelligent chassis systems.
An industry analysis carried by D1EV argues that premium ride quality is now less about raw acceleration and more about body control, vertical dynamics, and suspension intelligence. With CDC, air suspension, and hydraulic active control systems spreading across the market, the chassis is becoming a real-time electromechanical system.
The core problem is that active suspension performance increasingly depends not only on hardware, but on:
- Control software
- Calibration
- Sensor synchronization
- End-to-end latency
A delay of just 1 millisecond can distort control logic, causing the system to act correctly at the wrong time. For drivers, that shows up as:
- Extra body bounce
- Harsh high-frequency vibration
- Poor pothole composure
- A “floaty” or boat-like ride feel
Why testing matters more than ever
Traditional development flows such as:
- MiL
- SiL
- Bench durability testing
- Prototype tuning
are no longer enough for highly coupled active chassis systems.
The article highlights NOVATECH’s 1/4-car mHiL active suspension test bench, which aims to bring laboratory validation closer to real-world physical conditions. Claimed benefits include:
- Closed-loop refresh rate below 1 ms via EtherCAT
- Road-spectrum reproduction accuracy of 5% or better
- Better replication of roads such as Nürburgring surfaces, Belgian paving, and highway bridge joints
- Closed-loop interaction using CarMaker so the controller can respond to realistic inertia and dynamic feedback
This matters because many chassis algorithms look good in simulation but fail when exposed to real loads, temperature swings, and physical disturbances.
Why This Matters
Taken together, these three developments capture where the Chinese EV industry is heading next.
1. Smart driving is entering a tougher phase
Urban NOA is no longer judged by demo videos or isolated scenarios. Unknown routes, parking-lot navigation, compliance, and efficiency are becoming the true benchmarks.
2. Export success is increasingly built on value plus technology
South Africa shows that Chinese brands can move from niche to mainstream when they combine affordability, rich specs, and credible ownership support.
3. The competitive edge is shifting deeper into the stack
The next layer of differentiation is not just battery size or acceleration. It is software-defined vehicle behavior, including smart driving, active suspension, and the validation tools behind them.
Looking Ahead
Expect three trends to accelerate over the next 12 months:
- More public benchmarking of urban NOA systems, especially in complex Chinese city traffic
- Faster overseas expansion by Chinese EV and SUV brands in value-sensitive emerging markets
- Heavier investment in intelligent chassis and high-fidelity testing infrastructure as ride quality becomes a premium differentiator
For now, Exeed’s five-win streak in Hefei suggests that consistency in real-world smart driving still matters more than hype. And in overseas markets like South Africa, the broader Chinese auto industry is proving that competitive pricing, strong tech, and improving product execution can translate into real market share gains.
