Chinese Smart Driving at the Paris Motor Show: Share Doubles in a Year, Money Is Flowing Toward These Three Main Lines

Physix Frontier · Smart Driving Going Global Series | Separate what was said on the show floor from what has already landed

The XPeng booth at the 2026 Paris Motor Show, where the G9L made its global debut and opened for European orders (Photo: Xinhua reporter Wu Huiwo)

On October 12, the 91st Paris International Motor Show opened at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles for a one-week run. According to Xinhua News Agency, a total of 16 Chinese automakers exhibited 25 brands at this year's show, doubling the number from 2024. Separately, according to AutoToutiao, among the 59 vehicle exhibitors, Chinese brands accounted for 22 (37.3%), while host country France had 10 and Germany had 7 — the number of Chinese brands was 5 more than France and Germany combined.

What drew even more attention was the Smart Driving Lab public road test, set up for the first time at the show this year: the organizers invited exhibiting automakers to put advanced driver assistance systems onto real Paris streets, and in the end only China's XPeng and America's Tesla showed up to take on the challenge, with European domestic automakers absent as a group.

Public smart driving experience on the streets of Paris, with XPeng and Tesla on the same stage

On social media, claims that "Chinese smart driving crushes overseas rivals" were flooding feeds on one side, while on the other some said this was nothing more than booth marketing. Both voices exist, so don't rush to pick a side — separating what was said on the show floor from what has already landed will make the conclusion clearer.

Comparison of vehicle exhibitor numbers: Chinese brands outnumber France and Germany combined by 5

What they brought to the show floor is no longer just cars

Unlike the early days when Chinese automakers attended overseas auto shows, at this Paris Motor Show Chinese exhibitors brought out an entire package: complete vehicles, the smart driving supply chain, and plans for how to establish a long-term foothold in Europe. Looking only at scale underestimates it; the real change is in the structure.

On the vehicle side, XPeng brought its new-generation flagship G9L to Paris for its global debut, simultaneously opening European pre-orders, with a starting price in France of 74,990 euros. The car is over 5.1 meters long with a 3.1-meter wheelbase, supports an 800V platform and 5C ultra-fast charging, going from 10% to 80% charge in as little as 11.7 minutes, and is also equipped with dual-chamber air suspension and rear-wheel steering, with a turning radius of only 5.5 meters. AITO announced it will enter Europe in autumn 2027, based on EU Whole Vehicle Type Approval (EUWVTA), with the goal of achieving a EuroNCAP 2026 five-star rating. Li Auto participated in an overseas auto show for the first time, bringing the Li 6; the Avatr T09 completed its global premiere, equipped with four 896-line lidars and paired with Huawei ADS 5.0.

The supply chain also took the stage this time. Upstream segments such as lidar, automotive-grade chips, and smart driving algorithms rarely appeared alongside complete vehicles at overseas auto shows before, but this time they all became part of the Chinese exhibitor lineup. This change is more noteworthy than displaying a few more cars.

Smart driving on the road: a public road test with only China and the US taking up the challenge

What the media really focused on at this year's show was the Smart Driving Lab public road test. The event ran from October 12 to 18 on public city roads in Paris, with each session lasting about 25 minutes and demonstrating advanced driver assistance under safety-supervisor oversight. According to information released by the organizers, only two automakers participated: XPeng deployed 2 MONA L03 vehicles to demonstrate its NGP system equipped with a second-generation VLA large model; Tesla deployed 6 Model 3 vehicles to demonstrate FSD (Supervised).

XPeng Group Vice President Yu Tao (social media account Thomas Electric Train) revealed that the organizers had originally sent invitations to all exhibiting automakers, but the project required real-world test drives by hundreds or thousands of media outlets on actual Paris city roads, setting an extremely high bar, and in the end all the other brands withdrew. He said bluntly that this kind of public real-world test is a severe test of technical strength, and cars that are insufficiently prepared may only be able to drive a very short distance.

This shared stage was not improvised on the spot. In September this year, Xinhua reporters had conducted same-route experiences with XPeng and Tesla in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, covering scenarios including narrow roads, mixed pedestrian and bicycle traffic, and construction zones; even earlier, XPeng NGP had also