DeepRoute.ai says assisted-driving system installed in 300,000 Chinese cars

DeepRoute.ai said its advanced assisted-driving system was already installed in more than 300,000 cars on Chinese roads, a scale jump that shows intelligent driving software has moved well beyond the pilot stage. Chief executive Maxwell Zhou said the company expected another 1 million vehicles to be equipped this year, making the Beijing auto show a showcase not just for new cars, but for how quickly software is becoming the center of China’s auto race.

The announcement landed as automakers and suppliers crowded the 2026 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition, which ran from April 24 to May 3 under the theme “Leading the Era, Intelligent Future.” That framing captured what is now at stake: Chinese buyers are no longer being sold vehicles on range and charging speed alone, but also on whether a car can handle more of the driving task through sensors, mapping and automated support. For DeepRoute.ai, the figure of 300,000 vehicles offers a concrete measure of how far that shift has gone.

The rise matters because it suggests assisted driving is spreading from premium showcases into mass-market production. DeepRoute.ai’s company materials say it has deployed end-to-end and VLA models on mass-produced passenger vehicles, and its partnerships with Great Wall Motor, Geely and Smart show how far the software is moving into mainstream factory lines. DeepRoute raised $100 million from Great Wall Motor in November 2024, a sign that large automakers are treating autonomous features as a core product battle, not a side experiment.

A January 2026 industry white paper from the China Automotive New Supply Chain Research Institute placed DeepRoute.ai, Momenta and Huawei HI among the top three third-party providers by cumulative urban autonomous-driving, or NOA, deployments from January through October 2025. The same paper said DeepRoute.ai and Huawei HI were the fastest-growing names in that period, with DeepRoute’s deployment volume increasing 2.7 times. That pace points to a market learning in public, on real roads, at industrial scale.

DeepRoute’s own trajectory shows how fast the sector has accelerated. In late 2024, the company had about 20,000 equipped cars and expected nearly 200,000 by the end of 2025. The new 300,000-car figure means it has already outgrown that earlier target and is pushing into a much larger deployment phase. For competitors outside China, the message is blunt: the contest is no longer just about selling electric cars. It is about who can integrate reliable driving software quickly enough to win trust, gather data and set the pace for the next generation of everyday vehicles.