China’s EV price war turns into AI arms race beyond cheaper cars

china's ev price war is now an ai arms race. over 50 car brands use bytedance's doubao ai model, according to volcano engine at the beijing auto show. that means doubao is in 145 car models and over 7 million vehicles. foreign brands like the mercedes-benz glc and saic audi e7x have integrated it too. "this price war is not going to really stop in the next month," said fermín soneira, ceo of the audi and saic cooperation project. the shift is about consumer demand for connected features — huawei-smartphone interfaces, voice assistants like doubao. doubao has over 155 million weekly active users in china. the problem: the tech becomes similar fast. among china's top 20 best-selling evs priced at 100,000 yuan ($14,645) or above, driver-assist and in-car entertainment functions are basically the same, per alixpartners. nio claims its es8 is the first model in the 400,000 yuan segment to hit 100,000 units in 215 days. alibaba also announced its qwen ai model will go into byd and volkswagen joint venture vehicles, running on nvidia chips.