VW Group presents first AUDI and new ADAS system in Shanghai

Volkswagen Group’s premium Audi brand is fighting back with a range of new, more extended versions of its models designed for the Chinese market, where wealthier consumers with chauffeurs often sit in the back of their cars. It also showcased the first vehicle of a new model line with a different logo from its famous four rings to win back sales.

CARIZON, a joint venture between Volkswagen’s software subsidiary Cariad and China’s Horizon Robotics, demonstrated VW’s first in-house automated driving system. This year, it will be integrated into one of its cars. A more advanced version will be available in its entry-level cars from 2026.

AUDI E5 Sportback

The new model line, AUDI in capital letters, will target younger consumers. Its first car for mass production, the E5 Sportback, will be built on a platform from its joint venture partner, SAIC, a Chinese state-owned carmaker, and priced below Audi’s other models.

“With our new AUDI brand exclusively for China, we are taking the next step and offering new answers to the growing Chinese electric car market,” says Gernot Döllner, Chairman of the Board of Management of AUDI AG. “The E5 Sportback offers the strengths of Audi, reinterprets the DNA of our brand, and is perfectly tailored to the needs of Chinese customers.”

The E5 Sportback is positioned in the D-segment. It is 4.88 meters long, 1.96 meters wide, and 1.48 meters high. The model is based on the new Advanced Digitised Platform (ADP) developed jointly with SAIC and will be available in four drive variants in summer 2025, with 220, 300, 425, or 579 kW of power.

Thanks to its battery of up to 100 kWh, the rear-wheel-drive model offers a maximum range of 770 kilometres, while the more powerful all-wheel-drive models are designed more for performance. The 800-volt system ensures that the E5 can recharge for 370 kilometers in ten minutes.

Made for China

The Ingolstadt-based company also emphasises classic features, such as progressive all-wheel steering and adaptive air suspension with continuous damper control, which are intended to ensure comfortable handling.

However, the E5 should score points with other features at its core, as Audi models could also have offered such technology. Even before the drive’s announcement, the ‘intuitive’ AUDI OS operating system with the high-performance Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 processor, the 27-inch 4K display, and the AUDI Assistant are presented.

According to Audi, the AUDI OS will be linked to a “rich ecosystem of entertainment offerings and apps,” and the app store will be “fully integrated into China’s digital world, smartphone connectivity works seamlessly. “

The AUDI Assistant is an AI-supported, touch and voice-controlled avatar designed to make digital interaction more human. “The high computing power enables natural language processing, personal memory, behavior selection (Vohico by ByteDance), and haptic feedback, among other things,” explains Audi.

As the Advanced Digitised Platform, with its electronics architecture, enables OTA updates, such features will likely also be continuously developed. This also applies to the driving assistants, which use a 100-line long-range lidar, among other things. Future AUDI models will also benefit from this: AUDI has announced two further electric models based on the E5 for 2026 and 2027.

Volkswagen’s automated driving system

The Volkswagen Group is presenting its first automated driving system at the Auto Shanghai trade show. The system, developed by Cariad’s joint venture Carizon, is specially designed for China’s complex traffic conditions and is intended to master driving functions up to level 2++.

Volkswagen is positioning its automated driving system (ADAS) in China as a solution for “particularly natural and safe driving behaviour.” It intends to present the technology in a first Volkswagen brand model as early as this year and integrate it into a new generation of smart cars in the compact class in China by 2026. Thus, the German company is trying to catch up with its Chinese competitors.

China’s electric car market is now so competitive that ADAS is increasingly becoming a decisive sales argument. The trend has even arrived in the low-price segment: China’s largest electric car manufacturer, BYD, announced in February, for example, that it would also integrate its assistance system called ‘God’s Eye’ into small cars in the future.

At the Shanghai Motor Show, Volkswagen reveals how the Group intends to restore its competitiveness. The system, which is the responsibility of Volkswagen’s troubled software company Cariad via its joint venture Carizon, is intended to offer “high-precision driving functions up to Level 2++.”

Level 2 offers so-called semi-automated driving aids in the automated driving spectrum (from L1 to L5). In the case of 2++, this applies to both highway and urban traffic scenarios. The leap to level 3 (‘highly automated driving’) is that only then can drivers temporarily turn away from driving tasks and traffic.

In technical terms, Volkswagen’s new ADAS solution is based on a system-on-a-chip (SoC) approach, in which many components (including processor and memory) are integrated into a single chip. According to Volkswagen, this compact design paired with high computing power should enable “smooth and fast reactions to a wide range of driving situations.”

Specially for China

The Wolfsburg-based company describes its own ADAS for China as an “important milestone in building up its development expertise for core technologies in high demand from Chinese customers.” In the Far East, users are known to attach greater importance to infotainment and connectivity functions in their cars than in Europe, for example.

Volkswagen writes: “In the Chinese market, a quarter of all newly registered vehicles are already equipped with a Level 2 driving system for highway scenarios. By 2030, Level 2+ will be used in over 80% of existing vehicles. Level 2++ is expected to be installed in 75% of new vehicles.”

It is also worth mentioning that the trade fair debut of Volkswagen’s own ADAS system coincides with the moment when China begins to regulate the use and marketing of software-based driver assistance systems more strictly in the country.

Manufacturers are being instructed to refrain from advertising with terms such as ‘self-driving’ or ‘autonomous driving’, no longer complete public beta tests, and only carry out over-the-air updates once validation has been completed.

According to industry experts, the government is concerned that users are not sufficiently aware of the limits of such systems and that the companies’ marketing could further mislead consumers.

As a result, there is already an increasing number of road accidents in China. A severe crash involving a Xiaomi SU7, in which three women died, recently attracted a great deal of attention regarding autonomous driving systems in the country. According to the findings, the driver assistance software was activated during the accident.

Chinese portals such as Car News China see the announcement of the stricter regulations as a “signal of the government’s determination to regulate this sector more strictly.”

The government has also just introduced more stringent safety standards for batteries, which will come into force in 2026. According to experts, the two could accelerate consolidation in China’s overcrowded car industry.