China’s Auto Industry Races to Integrate DeepSeek AI

DeepSeek has recently surged in popularity, surpassing 20 million daily active users. In response, Chinese automakers are racing to take the lead integrating the DeepSeek AI model into their smart vehicles.

According to CarNewsChina, Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng emphasised that the impact of AI on the automobile industry over the next decade will far exceed that of electrification. This sentiment was echoed by Li Xiang, chairman of Li Auto, who adds that while electrification represents only the first stage of transformation, true intelligence through AI is the key to the future of car manufacturing.

Recently, Geely became the first automaker to announce that it has successfully integrated its self-developed AI model with DeepSeek’s R1 model - kicking off the distillation training process. The process transfers knowledge from the large Deepseek AI model to smaller bits which will reduce consumption of computing resources and inference time.

Similar to Geely, Zeekr too has revealed that its Kr AI model has been integrated with DeepSeek R1. They firm’s AI-powered cockpit assistant, AI Eva will also launch soon featuring DeepSeek’s AI integration.

Other automakers have joined the a, with companies such as Dongfeng, Changan, Leapmotor, IM Motors, SGMW, GAC and GWM all announcing successful integration with DeepSeek.

By incorporating this advanced AI technology, these automakers aim to enhance their vehicles' capabilities by including more natural and accurate voice interaction, multi-round conversations with context understanding, better recognition of driver intentions and faster development capabilities for continuous improvement.

Based on the speed of integration from these Chinese auto makers, it does seem that the DeepSeek module has been developed with the automakers in the loop and more Chinese brands are expected to integrate DeepSeek into their vehicles in the near future.

With the success of DeepSeek’s global launch, Chinese automakers now see speed of integration a crucial factor to remain competitive in the race toward AI-driven automotive intelligence.