Volkswagen announces voice AI in its Chinese cars from later this year
Volkswagen is showcasing a prototype of the ID.Aura T6 in Beijing, China, in April 2026.
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German automobile giant Volkswagen announced that it will add artificial intelligence voice commands to its vehicles for the Chinese market.
Starting in the second half of this year, all vehicles based on Volkswagen’s Chinese auto system will feature artificial intelligence tools that allow people to control car features with voice commands, the company said on Tuesday.
“The car should be like a friend,” Volkswagen China CTO Thomas Ulbrich told CNBC’s Eunice Yoon.
The company’s in-car artificial intelligence agent will leverage technologies from Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu to create a vehicle with a “personality” that can anticipate the driver’s needs, he said.
The AI uses a large, locally trained language model and runs entirely on the vehicle rather than in the cloud.
Volkswagen unveiled four cars, including the ID, in Beijing on Tuesday. UNYX 09, which the company claims to have developed jointly with EV manufacturer Xpeng over two years.
The move is part of the company’s strategy to make up for lost market share as China rapidly shifts from vehicles powered by internal combustion engines to electric cars.
Over the past few years, Volkswagen has invested heavily in China, with stakes in Xpeng and automotive chip maker Horizon Robotics.
Thanks to these partnerships, the German automaker does not use Nvidia chips in its cars in China. Instead, Volkswagen is using Xpeng’s Turing chip in an electric SUV set to begin deliveries at the end of June. An advanced automotive chip project is in development with Horizon Robotics.
Volkswagen also announced Tuesday that it will use agency AI to power a unified driver assistance and cockpit control system starting next year.
German in November automaker announced The research center in Hefei was able to shorten time to market by independently developing and validating the technology for Chinese cars.
Over the past two years, German automotive industry companies in China have significantly increased their research and development activities in the country to serve both the local and global market, according to a report published Tuesday by the German Chamber of Commerce in China.
The report stated that nearly 80% of automotive companies surveyed by the chamber said that localizing R&D in China has reduced these costs compared to Germany in the last two years, while about 43% of those surveyed said their innovation speed has increased by more than 40%.
