Author | Wu Yuqing Editor | Tian Zhe
When it comes to Chinese automakers going global, the main protagonists are usually the OEMs.
In 2023, China surpassed Japan to become the world's largest automobile exporter. By 2025, the market share of Chinese brands in Europe had doubled to approximately 6%, reaching about 11% in the UK, nearly 9% in Spain and Italy, and close to 14% in Norway.
However, as Chinese automobiles begin to expand into broader markets, a group of companies that previously stayed behind the scenes of OEMs are stepping into the spotlight.
The reason is that what is being exported today is no longer a vehicle composed solely of mechanical and electrical components. ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems), domain controllers, algorithms, software updates, and cybersecurity are all crossing borders alongside the complete vehicles.
More importantly, overseas markets are raising their requirements for these capabilities. Some ADAS features that were previously used to differentiate trim levels on domestic models have now been incorporated into regulatory and safety evaluation systems in Europe. For Chinese vehicles to enter new markets, a complete set of intelligent driving capabilities is required behind the scenes to adapt to local regulations, road conditions, and data systems.
In the next phase of Chinese automobiles going global, intelligent driving Tier 1 suppliers are becoming increasingly critical participants.
Chinese Automobiles Going Global: Entering the Phase of Intelligent Driving Capability Export
In the first half of 2026, the share of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in the EU new car market reached 20.7%, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) accounted for 9.8%, and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) accounted for 37.3%. As electrification continues to penetrate, vehicle software, electrical/electronic (E/E) architecture, and ADAS capabilities are becoming increasingly deeply involved in product competition.
UN R171, which took effect in 2024, establishes unified requirements for DCAS (Driver Control Assistance Systems) capable of continuously controlling the lateral and longitudinal motion of the vehicle for the first time, covering precisely the large number of L2 ADAS features currently available. Coupled with regulations such as R155 and R156 established around cybersecurity and software updates, overseas markets require an intelligent driving solution to provide not only functions but also system safety, software updates, data, and whole vehicle lifecycle management.
This presents new opportunities for Chinese intelligent driving Tier 1 suppliers.
In the past, Chinese automakers could directly export mature domestic models overseas. However, as intelligent driving-related features increasingly enter market access and evaluation systems, a vehicle entering a new country often requires the simultaneous migration of a complete set of software, algorithms, testing and validation, and compliance capabilities behind the scenes.
For Chinese intelligent driving suppliers, their roles are gradually extending from simply providing domain controllers and algorithms to helping automakers complete overseas market access and localized development.
Regulations are only the first hurdle. Once intelligent driving truly enters overseas roads, Tier 1 suppliers must re-adapt to the road environments and driving habits of different countries.
One seemingly simple example is speed limits.
Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) requires vehicles to recognize road speed limits and provide correct prompts to drivers, but speed limit rules in Europe are far more complex than simply recognizing a digital sign. Some roads have implicit speed limits, and different countries have different speed limit cancellation signs.
Zhang Wei, Senior System Director at iMotion Technology, once cited his own overseas living experience as an example: "When driving locally, many times you yourself don't even know what the speed limit of the road is, and suddenly you get a ticket." In actual projects, ISA has therefore become one of the functions with a heavy validation workload.
Similar differences also exist in more complex driving scenarios.
Some highways in Germany have no speed limits, requiring vehicles to complete perception, tracking, and planning control at higher speeds, which places higher demands on detection range and planning and control capabilities. European roads also frequently feature target objects uncommon in China, such as boat-towing vehicles, towed trailers, and cargo bicycles, requiring perception models to be re-optimized for these scenarios.
Driving habits also affect the performance of an intelligent driving solution. When working on projects in Eastern Europe, iMotion Technology encountered issues with alarm functions being triggered too frequently. Further testing revealed that local drivers generally follow at closer distances and drive at faster speeds. On some narrow roads, the emergency lane avoidance function is also prone to over-triggering. Strategies that were already tuned in China still need to be readjusted locally.
These problems precisely amplify the value of mature Tier 1 suppliers. As Chinese automobiles enter more and more countries, automakers' requirements for intelligent driving suppliers are also increasing; they must possess mature mass production capabilities while also covering regulatory certification, road adaptation, software updates, and subsequent validation.
In the past, competition among Chinese intelligent driving Tier 1 suppliers occurred more on domestic models. Now, as the scale of complete vehicle exports expands, their capability boundaries are also being taken overseas.
The farther Chinese automobiles are sold, the more critical it is to have an intelligent driving capability that can be stably implemented across different markets.
iMotion Technology: How to Bring Domestic Intelligent Driving Capabilities Overseas?
For today's intelligent driving Tier 1 suppliers, overseas competition tests whether they can consolidate the regulatory, road, software, and validation requirements of different countries into a set of delivery capabilities that can be continuously replicated across different nations.
This is also the true threshold for Chinese intelligent driving Tier 1 suppliers going global.
Intelligent driving companies represented by iMotion Technology have already made a series of layouts around the capability requirements for going global.
iMotion Technology currently serves over 20 customers, has secured more than 100 designated projects, and has a cumulative shipment volume exceeding 1.6 million units, with nearly half of the projects covering markets such as the EU, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Central and South America. In addition, iMotion Technology is the first domestic intelligent driving supplier to achieve exports to highly regulated regions in the EU based on Horizon Robotics Journey 3, and also the first team to deploy BEV (Bird's Eye View) perception on a low-computing-power SoC (System on Chip) for mass production.
The first step for these overseas projects is to complete the adaptation to local regulations and safety evaluation systems.
Previously, iMotion's ADAS solutions based on the Horizon Robotics Journey series have been mass-produced on 7 vehicle models, among which 2 models passed the EU GSR (General Safety Regulation) requirements and obtained a 5-star E-NCAP certification. iMotion Technology currently has experience with over 30 overseas mass-produced vehicle models and has formed overseas compliance capabilities centered around regulations and evaluation systems such as GSR, GDPR, and NCAP.
After completing market access, localized development is the second hurdle.
Differences in speed limits, special vehicles, and driving habits at home and abroad ultimately need to be implemented in specific development work. To this end, iMotion has established an R&D service center in Munich, Germany, with a team covering algorithm development, systems engineering, and testing and validation. Focusing on overseas road and parking scenarios, iMotion Technology has accumulated over 200,000 kilometers of overseas driving data and over 5.5 million frames of overseas parking data, and has built an overseas parking test site in China, covering 25 countries and more than 70 parking scenarios.
This overseas data can help the R&D team more accurately understand local road conditions, parking environments, and user habits, thereby improving the targeting of subsequent development and validation.
For example, there are obvious differences in parking habits among different countries; some markets are more accustomed to nose-in parking, and disabled parking spaces, space dimensions, and markings are not entirely the same. Parking solutions tuned in the past for the domestic market may not be directly reusable overseas. By establishing scenario databases and testing capabilities in advance, suppliers can digest these issues as much as possible before the vehicle models enter the local market.
At the same time, overseas data itself is subject to stricter compliance constraints. Especially in Europe, data collection, transmission, storage, and usage must comply with GDPR requirements. For intelligent driving systems that rely on continuous data iteration, this means suppliers must not only have algorithm capabilities but also simultaneously establish data desensitization, transmission, and lifecycle management systems.
As overseas projects increase, another key issue is reducing redundant development. iMotion has currently been gradually transforming the underlying software, hardware, and manufacturing on the Horizon Robotics Journey series into a platform-based development system, supporting rapid migration and adaptation for different vehicle models.
For Tier 1 suppliers, the more overseas projects they have, the more they need to improve the reuse rate of regulatory, data, software, hardware, and testing experience, thereby reducing redundant development for subsequent vehicle models.
From this perspective, what iMotion Technology is truly exporting overseas has extended from a single domain controller to an intelligent driving delivery system covering software and hardware, engineering, data, and manufacturing, which can follow vehicle models into different markets.
From Domestic Mass Production to the Global Supply Chain
iMotion Technology has brought an increasing number of intelligent driving solutions overseas, but the question worth asking is why these capabilities can be continuously replicated across different countries, vehicle models, and customers.
The answer first comes from the long-term, high-frequency mass production validation in the Chinese market.
In the past few years, the intelligentization of Chinese automobiles has penetrated rapidly, the update speed of vehicle models has accelerated, and intelligent driving solutions have gradually extended from a few high-end models to a broader price range. For Tier 1 suppliers, this means more designated projects and shorter development cycles, and also means that product, engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain capabilities need to be repeatedly validated in real mass production.
iMotion Technology has completed its scale accumulation precisely in such a market environment.
In the first half of 2026, iMotion Technology achieved a revenue of CNY 760.5 million, a year-on-year increase of 107.79%. The company explained in its semi-annual report that the growth mainly came from multiple OEM projects entering the mass production and delivery phase, among which the sales volume of ADAS domain controllers increased by 62.32% year-on-year, and the sales volume of its self-developed iDC series domain controllers and smart forward-looking cameras increased by 160.36% year-on-year.
During the same period, iMotion Technology secured a total of 37 designated projects and entered the supply chain of an overseas direct-supply customer for the first time.
The more mass production projects accumulated, the more opportunities there are for software and hardware development, whole vehicle integration, testing and validation, and manufacturing and delivery experience to be reused by subsequent vehicle models.
At the same time, iMotion's product capabilities are continuing to extend to different computing power levels and application scenarios.
In the first half of 2026, the iDC310 based on Horizon Robotics Journey 6B has been mass-produced and installed in vehicles, and the iDC510 Pro based on Journey 6M has also achieved mass production installation, with the first vehicle model launched in March. The iDC700, aimed at L4 autonomous driving, has completed its first batch of deliveries and is deployed on unmanned logistics vehicles for operation. Thus, iMotion has formed a domain controller product portfolio ranging from entry-level, high-performance to L4.
A more complete product portfolio also enhances iMotion Technology's ability to adapt to different overseas vehicle models.
Vehicle prices, chip platforms, and intelligent driving configurations vary across different countries and brands. If a supplier only has a single fixed solution, they often need to do a lot of customization for each customer. However, after covering different computing power platforms and product tiers, when facing overseas projects, they can combine and adapt based on existing products.
But to become a global Tier 1 supplier, product capabilities must be complemented by local R&D, manufacturing, and service systems.
iMotion established R&D capabilities in Europe very early on. By February 2026, the company further established a Japan division, focusing on exploring the Japanese market and building a local delivery system. Meanwhile, the joint venture in Malaysia has completed trial production and entered the final customer audit stage, with plans to officially commence mass production and delivery in the third quarter of 2026.
iMotion Technology's capital investment has also begun to tilt towards its overseas network. Of the funds raised from previous placements by iMotion, a portion has been explicitly used to expand the overseas sales and service network. The funds raised from the placement in February 2025 also continue to reserve relevant budgets, planned to be invested by the end of 2026.
This means that iMotion's overseas business is gradually shifting from the early stage of following customers with projects to the long-term construction of R&D, manufacturing, and service nodes.
Once this set of capabilities is established, new changes follow. Chinese intelligent driving Tier 1 suppliers are beginning to serve not only the overseas models of Chinese automakers but have also entered the procurement vision of overseas OEMs.
At the same time, global automakers are also re-evaluating the Chinese supply chain.
In September this year, Honda launched a large-scale cost reduction plan, hoping to cut costs by over 1.5 trillion Japanese yen, approximately 9.4 billion US dollars, by 2030, and requiring suppliers to reduce costs by about 30% on some core components. According to internal documents and supply chain information obtained by foreign media, Honda is also encouraging increased procurement from Chinese suppliers, focusing on electrical components and software-defined vehicle-related parts.
This does not mean that overseas automakers have fully shifted to Chinese intelligent driving suppliers, but it at least sends a signal that the cost, development efficiency, and intelligentization capabilities formed by the Chinese supply chain through past high-intensity competition are entering the scope of consideration as global automakers re-evaluate their supply chains.
A project secured by iMotion this year perfectly corresponds to this change.
In January 2026, iMotion won the mass production designation for 4 vehicle models of a certain South Korean automotive group for the first time, providing them with an integrated driving and parking ADAS solution. The project lifecycle runs from 2026 to 2033, with expected sales of nearly 1 million units, of which nearly half will be sold overseas, and it must also meet local regulations and NCAP requirements in Australia and New Zealand.
Compared to simply following Chinese brands overseas, such projects go a step further; the customers extend from Chinese OEMs to overseas OEMs, and the projects face a broader global market.
This is not a change unique to iMotion. Freetech, Desay SV, and other Chinese automotive electronics and intelligent driving Tier 1 suppliers have also been continuously increasing their overseas R&D, manufacturing, and customer support capabilities in recent years. The cooperation between Chinese suppliers and international automakers is gradually extending from Chinese local vehicle model projects to global vehicle models and cross-regional development.
Conclusion
For iMotion Technology, the significance of going global is changing.
In the early stages, iMotion's overseas business expanded outward more by accompanying Chinese automakers and global vehicle models. As overseas mass production projects increase, the company has begun to form more comprehensive capabilities in regulatory certification, local R&D, data compliance, manufacturing, and service networks.
Today, from entering the supply chain of an overseas direct-supply customer to winning the vehicle model designation of a South Korean automotive group for the first time, iMotion is attempting to transform the mass production and engineering experience accumulated in the Chinese market into the capability to directly serve overseas automakers.
This is also the change occurring in the globalization of Chinese intelligent driving Tier 1 suppliers. In the past, the globalization of the Chinese automotive industry chain was more manifested in complete vehicle exports and suppliers following automakers into overseas markets. Now, some Tier 1 suppliers that have undergone large-scale mass production validation in the Chinese market are beginning to attempt to directly enter the supply chains of international automakers and participate in the development and delivery of global vehicle models.
After Chinese automobiles are sold globally, what follows them out is shifting from individual vehicles to an entire Chinese intelligent vehicle supply chain.