At the 2025 China EV 100 Forum, Zhang Yaqin, an academician of the ChineseAcademy of Engineering and dean of the Tsinghua University Institute forArtificial Intelligence Industry, made a remarkable prediction. He said that2025 will be the “chatgpt moment” for self-driving technology, sparking greatanticipation in the industry.
Zhang Yaqin emphasized that self-driving will be the largest embodied AIapplication in the NEXt five years. Moreover, this technology will pass the”new Turing test” for the first time. Although 2025 is a crucial point forself-driving, its wide application and popularization will take more time andeffort. He beliEVEs that if things go well, companies like Waymo in the US andBaidu, WeRide, and Pony.ai in China may achieve market breakthroughs by 2025.
Zhang Yaqin also predicted that by 2030, around 10% of new cars will have L4autonomous driving capabilities, which he called the “DeepSeek moment”. Thisis another significant milestone in the large-scale popularization of self-driving technology.
DesPite his optimism, Zhang Yaqin warned that the development of self-drivingis not without challenges. The safety and technological maturity of self-driving still need continuous improvement, and relevant companies andinstitutions need to work together to ensure reliability and safety.
It should be noted that last year, He Xiaopeng of XPeng Motors also expresseda similar view, believing that 2025 will be the “ChatGPT moment” forautonomous driving. This further raises the industry’s expectations for thefuture of self-driving.
In the current fast-paced technological development, self-driving is not onlythe pursuit of technology companies but also a major trend in socialdevelopment. We are looking forward to seeing the revolutionary changes thatself-driving technology will bring to transportation in the near future.
