Driving without steering wheels…That's still a long way to go. For now, you can cut yourself some slack with assisted driving in intelligent cockpits. But we all want fully autonomous driving cars that are more complex than just a smart cockpit. Are auto companies ready to make that happen?  

Smart cockpits are your assistants on the road. You can ask the AI to find the place, adjust the seat and occasionally drive for you. Are consumers jumping on this interim product's bandwagon?  

Thomas Fang, partner and China VP of Roland Berger, said, "We might still need to wait to 2030, around somewhere out there that we can see some substantial breakthrough into a very advanced level of autonomous driving, if we calculate by hardware and other specific technology, usually we see that in China about 100 billion yuan. If we look at the market growth, generally we believe that until 2025, I think it's about 11 percent, and from 2025 to 2030 we believe growth rate is about seven percent. So comparing with the cars I think it is still pretty good."

Data is essential for artificial intelligence, and China has a lot of data, especially for autonomous driving research, just look at the crazy traffic in Shanghai and Beijing, the complex road systems and sometimes wild driving style here. Local companies are capitalizing on that advantage. 

Nio is a New York stock exchange-listed Chinese auto company which makes electric cars and invests in its own AI technology.  

"Smart cockpit is vital for Nio. Our teams in both China and the U.S. are working on it together. Different from buying smart auto parts and systems from others, our strategy is developing our own AI systems, so we control our technologies. Initially, it was huge investment. Now, it has paid off as we hear positive feedback from our customers," Pu Yang, Beijing regional general manager of Nio. 

Nio wants to turn cars into mobile lounge rooms that run on data.  

"Consumers now believe that cars must be intelligent. With data, smart cars can improve themselves day after day. Like our ES8 model, its battery system self-improves everyday with data it collects, and the software system upgrades and adds on new functions with every use. This type of cars become better products with time, in terms of both hardware and software," Pu noted. 

That means there will hardly be any power player in the market as traditional auto makers are strong in hardware while tech companies are leading in AI systems.  

Fang explained: "I would say both of the parties want to do a lot of things with customer, so they are gaming with each other. And you see some of them have very strong internal supply base. Also we see some of the suppliers want go to carmaker business as well."

The level of competition is likely to extend the auto value chain as more suppliers are getting involved, especially as automakers are expanding their AI power from the cockpit to the entire car.  

That means those who want to win the race will keep investing in production capacity for speedier manufacturing and cheaper autonomous cars.  

(CGTN's Xia Cheng also contributed to the story)