China T-Box Market Overview
In 2020, over 9.4 million passenger vehicles were pre-equipped with T-Box in China, resulting in a 50% penetration rate that is expected to reach 85% by 2025.
T-Box adoption is stimulated by policies, but most importantly by the urge for versatile functions in smart cockpit and smart driving.
- According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, all vehicles listed in the Recommended Model Catalog for the Promotion and Application of New Energy Vehicles are required to install T-BOX.
- Auto OEMs are stepping up with infotainment and ADAS offerings every year, which translates into stronger interconnection between the in-vehicle system and the cloud (plus the road in the near future) through T-Box.
A variety of companies provide T-Box solutions, including international Tier 1s, local Tier 1s, telecom giants, tech startups, etc. while the market share is highly concentrated. During 2020, products from over 40 suppliers were installed on new passenger cars. However, the top 5 vendors took 50.36% of the market and the top 10 dominated 71.98%.
Top 10 T-Box Suppliers in China (Year 2020)
LG ranked №1 with over 1.14 million devices, mainly adopted by GM, Lynk & Co, Kia, Hyundai, Geely, FAW Hongqi, etc. The devices are manufactured in its factory located in Kunshan of Jiangsu province. Lan-You is a subsidiary of Dongfeng Motors and 90% of its products supplied Dongfeng owned brands. ECARX is a Geely invested company.
As the automotive E/E architecture is evolving towards domain centralized, the T-Box industry is going through rapid technology upgrades and product iterations. Suppliers will face new challenges moving forward.
The next generation T-Box solution will support 5G + C-V2X communications and be integrated with central gateway and functionalities like high definition positioning, firmware OTA, ETC, and so on. The recent launched devices and vehicle models give a sneak peek of the trend.
There are a total of 368 T-Box products issued with the network access license by far, among which 9 are 5G enabled. Companies like WanJi and Huawei have showcased the latest 5G C-V2X T-Box at the Auto Shanghai 2021.
The Licensed 5G T-Box Models (as of May 2021)
Auto OEMs used to feature remote control functions through T-Box, and an example would be the GAC Aion S launched during Q1 of 2020. Soon the attention switched to 5G, C-V2X and HD localization. A list of new models released since late 2020 are offering one or more of these features.
Vehicle Models with 5G/C-V2X/HD Localization Features (2020–2021)
