Seven of 10 vehicles in China to be smart by 2025

Up to 70 percent of new vehicles sold in China by 2025 will be smart ones with high-level driving-assist functions, said Zhang Kai, chairman of Chinese autonomous driving startup Haomo.ai.

The figure stood at 26.64 percent in the first half this year, said Zhang at an event held by the company on Tuesday.

"China is now the major market for smart vehicles," he said, adding that the country is now home to 57 percent of smart vehicles globally, ahead of Europe and the United States.

Thanks to Chinese customers' rising acceptance of autonomous driving, the country has seen a rise in autonomous companies and products.

Haomo's driving-assist system, called HPilot, has been installed in seven sedan and SUV models in the country, and the figure is expected to reach dozens by the end of this year.

The latest version of the system, the HPilot 3.0, is expected to hit the market later this year on a Wey SUV model from Chinese carmaker Great Wall Motors.

Zhang said the total mileage of vehicles with the HPilot system has exceeded 17 million kilometers.

Gu Weihao, CEO of Haomo, said driving-assist functions are crucial to fully autonomous driving, as they are the only way to amass enough data about traffic.

He said the technology will pick up speed as it is entering the data-driven phase from the software-driven one and the hardware-enabled one.