The Center of Automotive Management in Bergisch Gladbach named XPENG the world’s most innovative automotive group in autonomous driving and advanced safety systems in November 2025, in its Connected Car Innovation study. XPENG leads the field with 65.6 innovation points.
The study covers 30 international automotive groups and around 100 brands and is built on more than 2,300 connectivity-related innovations from 2020 to 2024: assistance technology, connectivity solutions, software services and control and display concepts. In 2024 more than 70 percent of the global innovation strength in the assistance field came from Chinese brands.
The award applies to the category for autonomous technology and driver assistance systems, not to the cars as a whole. CAM conducted the study, while the figures here come from XPENG’s account of it, and the release reproduces neither the points scale, the other placings nor CAM’s full method.
The automation levels
XPENG writes in the same release that XPILOT is standard on all models and gives a partially automated driving experience at level 2+, and that depending on market and regulation the cars reach additional automation functions up to level 3.5.
SAE J3016, the standard behind the levels, works with levels 0 to 5 in whole numbers, and level 3.5 is not one of them. XPENG itself ties the figure to two caveats, “depending on market and regulation” and “additional automation functions”.
The story of why the European version of the assistance system cannot be the Chinese one is about the rules, and the word on NGP globally is 2027.
Images: XPENG
Sources
XPENG Germany: first place in the CAM institute's Connected Car Innovation study · 27 November 2025