BYD and Tesla are more alike than the usual comparison suggests. Both seek control over the vehicle, battery, power electronics, charging hardware, charging network and wider energy system.

Circa mid-2020, COVID was still around, and my wife decided to buy a car for herself because it was unsafe to travel to work in a cab. I still remember when she picked up her Hyundai i20 from a dusty lane in Whitefield, Bangalore.

In the past, connectivity primarily supported core vehicle services such as navigation, remote vehicle control, emergency assistance, diagnostics, and over-the-air (OTA) software updates.

AI is quickly becoming part of the automotive technology conversation. But as OEMs explore where AI can create value inside the vehicle, another question is becoming increasingly important: where should that intelligence actually sit?

Ambitious ADAS demands some of the most advanced chips on the market, and this demand is set to rise.

For most of the last decade, the touchscreen in an Indian car was a glorified stereo. You simply plugged an aux cable into your infotainment system to play music or, if you were lucky, it had a Bluetooth connection so that you could pair your smartphone and play music.

Volkswagen’s Future Plan 2030 signals a hard reset of the traditional European volume-car business model, with deep cuts in capacity, workforce and complexity to regain cost competitiveness and strategic focus.

Navigation on a motorcycle is hardly new, riders have been mounting smartphones to handlebars for years. But what is changing is where navigation is appearing and who gets access to it.

Vehicle-to-grid technology is reaching the road, but commercial progress still relies on local energy rules, infrastructure and partners. For automakers, choosing where to launch V2G services is the most important decision.

As Li Auto's CTO Xie Yan aptly noted: just as no leading automaker in the ICE era would completely outsource their engine and chassis, underlying AI compute is the new "engine" of the smart vehicle era.

If you want to understand where the ADAS industry is really heading in 2026, this insight explores why the biggest opportunity may not be SAE Level 3 at all, but the rapid evolution of L2+ / L2++ assisted driving, urban autonomy and AI-native vehicle architectures. The 2026 ADAS landscape is evolving around three key trends: uncertainty over the market readiness of SAE Level 3, growing value creation from SAE Level 2 assisted driving and the increasing adoption of AI-centric

For more than a decade, competition in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) has been defined by hardware performance, sensor configurations and increasingly sophisticated driver assistance features. Vehicle manufacturers differentiated through compute platforms, perception capability and functions such as highway navigation and automated parking.

The term zonal architecture is one of the most overused phrases in the current SDV era. From disruptive brands like Tesla and established premium brands like Mercedes-Benz to regional giants like BYD, nearly every major automaker has zonal architectures in its 5-year/10-year roadmap, if not its immediate plan.

Keeping track of the Chinese automotive industry over the past six months has kept me busy. Fortunately, July has given us a chance to reflect on the year so far. In July, manufacturers posted their Q2 2026 delivery and sales data, allowing us to see a more complete picture of the performance of Chinese automakers in 2026.

The global telecommunications and automotive technology industries entered a new paradigm this year. When the GSMA hosted MWC Shanghai 2026, it signalled a fundamental shift under the overarching theme of "The IQ Era"—the definitive transition of the mobile ecosystem from standard cellular data pipes to active, cognitive, and autonomous intelligence platforms.

We have reached a point where Over-the-Air (OTA) updates are one of the clearest indicators of the maturity of Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs). The ability to remotely fix bugs, improve performance, introduce new features, and reduce dealership visits fundamentally changed how OEMs maintain and enhance vehicles after purchase. However, as OTA capability becomes increasingly common across the industry, the focus of competition is shifting.

For the past few years, the automotive industry has focused on defining what a Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) should look like. At SDV Europe 2026 in Berlin, that conversation had clearly moved on.

Vehicle HMI and infotainment are entering a phase where AI, contextualisation, and software‑defined architectures are reshaping how drivers and passengers experience the car.

As we mark the halfway point of 2026, one thing is apparent: consumer and industry technology is evolving faster than ever… still.