The 19 Most Exciting Cars at the Beijing Auto Show 2026 | WIRED

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While major motor shows in Europe and the United States are being forced to downsize or change their format, those in China continue to expand.

With 1,451 vehicles on display, including 181 world premieres, the 2026 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition 2026 (also known as Auto China 2026) has become the largest auto show in history—and that’s in terms of both exhibition space and the number of vehicles on display.

This fact itself reflects a shift in the center of gravity of the automotive industry, but that's not all. A much larger structural transformation is actually taking place in China today.

Previously, the focus was on low-priced electric vehicle models, but now price is no longer the primary point of competition. At the show, not only were there many high-end EVs and large SUVs from Chinese manufacturers equipped with advanced driver-assistance technologies and AI functions, but these technologies are also rapidly spreading to the lower price range.

Chinese manufacturers' cars offer many technologically impressive features. Lidar sensors, which use lasers for advanced driver assistance, are now even being incorporated into EVs costing less than 100,000 yuan (approximately $14,500). Models featuring “drive-by-wire” technology, which replaces mechanical steering connections and hydraulic brake lines with electrical signals, are appearing prominently. Even Toyota's local models are using Huawei's powertrains and smart cockpit OS.

The simplistic dichotomy of “cheap Chinese cars versus high-end European cars” no longer holds weight. While staying competitive in the low-price market, Chinese manufacturers are also gaining leadership in areas such as AI, driver-assistance systems, in-car chips, smart cockpits, and high-performance EVs.

These 19 particularly noteworthy models from the 2026 Beijing Motor Show best embody this evolution.

XPeng GX

Courtesy of Xpeng

There is a fundamental difference between a car designed for autonomous driving and an existing car that’s had autonomous driving technology added to it. XPeng Motors' GX is the former, a model in which sensors, computing infrastructure, and AI models with Level 4 autonomous driving in mind were designed first, then built into a new SUV bound for the commercial market.

Equipped with up to four proprietary AI chips, it boasts a total computing power of 3,000 tera operations per second—approximately 12 times the 254 TOPS that a single Nvidia Orin is capable of. The latest AI model in the vehicle can recognize spoken commands as well as the images captured by car’s cameras, and it can understanding and adapt to the current driving conditions.

Volkswagen has adopted XPeng’s AI chip and driver-assistance technology in its EVs, meaning XPeng is no longer just an EV manufacturer. It's becoming a platform provider supplying the brains behind autonomous driving to Europe's largest automaker. The price is 399,800 yuan (approximately $58,000).

Another “AI-native” car at the show is the Jiayue 07 from SAIC Motor's Roewe brand. It was designed around the Doubao Da Model 2.0, an LLM developed in collaboration with the cloud division of ByteDance, the company known for TikTok. The fact that multiple Chinese manufacturers are simultaneously demonstrating AI as the starting point of car design is highly significant.

Geely EVA Cab

Photograph: Tang Ke/VCG/Getty Images

Geely has debuted a minivan-type EV designed for fully autonomous driving. There’s no steering wheel and no foot pedals. The EVA Cab has no driver's seat and features a layout with four seats arranged face-to-face. It is positioned as China's first robotaxi, designed specifically for autonomous driving.

The system boasts a computing power exceeding 3,000 TOPS, and its lidar scanner is touted as being the world’s most powerful. Geely claims that it employs robust security technology for communication between the vehicle and the cloud. The specialty EV is going into mass production; Geely plans to commercialize it in 2027 through its ride-hailing service, CaoCao Mobility.

Li Auto L9 Livis

Photograph: VCG/Getty Images

Traditional cars had a metal shaft connecting the steering wheel and tires, and a hydraulic piping physically connecting the brake pedal and brake calipers. This structure remained unchanged for over 100 years, but the newest Chinese EVs are starting to employ a system called drive-by-wire, which replaces these mechanical parts with electrical signals.

Li Auto's L9 Livis integrates drive-by-wire (also called steer-by-wire, chassis-by-wire, and electrical steering), four-wheel steering, and electromechanical brakes all without any mechanical or hydraulic connections. According to Li Auto’s claims, this is a “world first.” The response speed of the electronically controlled brakes is significantly faster than that of hydraulic br