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By 2025, China's energy-saving and new energy vehicle talent gap reached one million. The supply-demand ratio for intelligent driving engineers is only 0.38, with fewer than one qualified candidate corresponding to one position on average.
More troubling is that even if double salaries are offered, it is difficult to poach a suitable intelligent system engineer from the market. Power batteries, intelligent driving, and three-electric systems, every emerging field is calling for more people, while graduates in traditional mechanics and processes face fierce competition in the job market. The old recruitment logic of "filling gaps where they exist" is failing.
How to solve this? At the Talent Sub-forum of the 2026 China Automotive Forum, guests gave the same answer: stop hoping to poach ready-made people from the market, but instead start training them internally.
Automotive Engineers Are Being Redefined
Why do HRs need to understand business more today? Because talent demand has changed.
In the past, what talent an automaker lacked, the answer was relatively clear. Engines, chassis, bodywork, processes, almost every position corresponded to a specific type of professional talent. HRs mostly handled matching positions and finding talent.
Today, companies discuss more about intelligent driving, large models, embodied intelligence, globalization... These changes ultimately affect the talent, and give the profession of automotive engineer a new profile.
Image Source: 2026 China Automotive Forum
Li Zhele, Secretary-General of the Automotive Talent Professional Committee of the China Talent Research Association, outlined the changes in automotive talent competency models in recent years. In the past, problem-solving ability was emphasized; now, complex problem-solving ability is emphasized more; in the past, learning ability was emphasized; now, rapid learning is required; in the past, it was more about imitative innovation; now, pioneering innovation is valued more and more. Among the six core competencies, almost every one has changed.
The changes appeared first in R&D teams. A set of survey data shared by Li Zhele shows that in 2025, software algorithm engineers at an eastern coastal automaker accounted for up to 70% of intelligent connected R&D personnel. Software developers in some top enterprises accounted for more than 50% of the R&D team.
This data does not negate the importance of mechanical engineering, but it shows the R&D team is changing. The knowledge system involved in automotive R&D is constantly expanding, extending from mechanical design to electronic electrical, software development, artificial intelligence, control engineering, and other fields. A single major is still important, but more and more positions start requiring interdisciplinary collaboration.
The growth pace has also quickened. In the past, it often took five to ten years for an automotive engineer from joining the company to independently undertake R&D work. Today, automotive R&D campus recruits can independently handle positions in an average of 19 months, in some intelligent connected components fields, it is even shortened to 15 months.
Research by Li Zhele's team on nearly 500 leading automotive talents also shows that talent with over 10 years of work experience accounts for 78%, the average age of leading talents is 37. The overall growth cycle of domestic leading talents has been shortened by 5 to 10 years compared to international peers.
The speed increased, requirements also improved. Li Zhele believes that in the future, more and more simple, certain, predictable tasks will be handed over to AI. Engineers will face more complex, uncertain, non-standard answer problems. That is to say, the automotive industry will not eliminate a certain major, but will eliminate people who stop evolving.
Image Source: 2026 China Automotive Forum
Similar judgments are also confirmed on the enterprise side. Geng Yi, General Manager of Changan Automobile's Industry-Education Integration Division, mentioned that today, the problems engineers face daily have gradually extended from component design to algorithm iteration, user experience optimization, and technology route selection. These problems are hard to complete relying on a single discipline, and standard answers rarely exist.
When the job profile of automotive engineers changes, those responsible for recruitment must perceive this change first. Li Zhele said a sentence: "HRs today need to know astronomy above and geography below, and also understand history. At least when meeting with business departments, you shouldn't be completely unable to understand what others are saying."
At first glance, this sounds like a requirement for HRs. But as the forum progressed, this statement received more specific annotations. The few automaker HR heads sharing next, almost none talked only about recruitment.
NIO Automobile HR Director Ding Wuxia concurrently introduced NIO's three brands, battery swapping system, and global R&D layout. XPeng Automobile Global Recruitment Director Dong Hanyu also first spoke about company positioning: besides cars, XPeng is also laying out ahead areas like flying cars, humanoid robots, with the goal of becoming a global embodied intelligence company. Afterwards, he elaborated on his thinking regarding recruitment talents.
This is not a coincidence in the sharing order. In the intelligent car era, what a company will do in the future, what kind of people it needs, and what capabilities these people must possess, can increasingly no longer be answered solely by job descriptions. The starting point of recruitment work has changed accordingly.
Recruitment standards are also adjusting accordingly. More and more companies are starting to seek composite talents who understand mechanics and are familiar with software, electronic electrical, algorithm fields, etc. Compared to a single professional capability, systems thinking and cross-domain collaboration capabilities are being mentioned more frequently.
Going Global, Another Talent War Battlefield
The domestic market is still adapting to this round of talent changes, globalization has pushed corporate talent demands to a new dimension. At the forum, multiple guests talked about going global, and the focus of the discussion was what kind of people enterprises need after 'going out'.
Li Kang, a member of the Committee for National Automotive Vocational Education Guidance of the Ministry of Education, divided Chinese car going global into three stages: product going global, brand and technology deep going global, and global ecosystem co-construction. Corresponding to different development stages, enterprise talent demands are also constantly changing.
Initially, enterprises relied more on expatriate teams, copying mature products, technologies, and management experience overseas. As business deepened, companies started establishing local R&D, manufacturing, and supply chain systems, with increasing demand for localized talent. Upon reaching the global operation stage, enterprises need to both establish unified talent standards and form cross-cultural collaboration and global management capabilities.
Image Source: Chery
Many enterprises have reached the second step, and some are even starting to move towards the third step.
Taking Chery as an example, it reactivated the local car brand Ebro in Spain, and participated in local industrial development through local production, brand operations, etc. Chery Chairman Yin Tongyue once proposed the concept of 'In somewhere, For somewhere, Be somewhere', hoping the enterprise can truly integrate locally, rather than simply selling products overseas.
In recent years, more and more Chinese automakers are starting to layout overseas factories, R&D centers, and supply chain systems. Products can enter the market, production lines can be replicated, what truly needs time to build is often people and organizations.
This point was reflected more concretely in Changan Automobile's sharing. Geng Yi mentioned that after the company entered the Thai market, there were labor disputes between Chinese and local employees regarding overtime culture. Compared to technology and products, these differences often have no unified answer.
From this, it can be seen that as Chinese automakers continue to enter new markets, enterprises need to face not only product certification and supply chain construction, but also a series of new topics including labor laws, talent development, organizational management, cultural integration, etc.
At the forum venue, many guests placed 'localization' in a more important position. Globalization layout has broken the talent boundaries of traditional localized operations. What enterprises need is not only R&D, manufacturing, and other professional talents, but also composite talents familiar with overseas regulations, cross-cultural communication, international operations, etc. As overseas business continues to expand, this talent gap is gradually appearing.
NIO chose to advance the globalization layout. Ding Wuxia introduced that NIO has always configured R&D resources according to globalization ideas. 'Where the talent is, NIO builds offices there.' In her opinion, when enterprises layout R&D centers, the first consideration is talent resources, rather than simply dividing by region.
Changan, however, focused its eyes on vocational education. It is promoting the 'Changan Workshop' project, building industry-education integration bases in overseas vocational colleges, hoping to combine enterprise standards, technical systems, and talent cultivation. Geng Yi stated that if Chinese brands hope to take root overseas long-term, just selling products there is not enough, it also needs to let local students familiarize with Chinese brands, Chinese technology, and Chinese standards.
Under this trend, the focus of enterprise concern has also gradually extended from 'selling cars out' to 'taking capabilities out'. This capability includes both R&D and manufacturing, as well as talent cultivation, organizational management, and cultural integration.
What enterprises lack going global is not just people who understand foreign languages. What enterprises hope to find are people who both understand the Chinese automotive industry and are familiar with local regulations, culture, and business environments. This type of talent can connect headquarters with overseas teams, and also help enterprises understand the operating rules of different markets.
Ultimately, It's a Race on Who Cultivates Faster
If in previous years automakers were still competing for talent, then another signal transmitted at this year's forum is that more and more enterprises are starting to focus their centers on cultivation systems.
The reason is not complex. Trends like intelligent driving, software development, AI large models, globalization, etc., put the industry in rapid change. This leads to talent needed by enterprises becoming newer, however mature talent in the market has not increased synchronously. Relying solely on social recruitment makes it difficult to solve long-term talent supply problems.
XPeng Automobile's Dong Hanyu shared a set of data. In 2025, XPeng's management and technical campus recruitment scale was about 500 people; in 2026, this number has already exceeded 1000 people; by 2027, the plan is close to 2000 people. Three categories of positions (management technical, production manufacturing, front-line sales) total campus recruitment scale will reach 5000 people.
Geely Group recruited more than 4000 fresh graduates in 2026. Geely Holding Group Senior Vice President Yang Xueliang said, "We internally call them wild geese. They are all one in a hundred, talented, and passionate young people. We hope they find their positioning on Geely's big stage and hone themselves."
The increase in number is just part of the change. Taking XPeng as an example, it is adjusting the entire talent strategy, shifting from the past dominated by social recruitment with campus recruitment as supplement, gradually towards a long-term model based on campus recruitment, young talent as the main body, and cultivation as key. By 2027, XPeng's campus recruitment proportion of total recruitment will increase from 50% to 70%.
Such adjustments are closely related to the development pace of enterprise business. In XPeng's view, AI has become the basic tool for R&D work. Young people contact new tools faster, learn faster, and adapt to new R&D ways more easily.
Image Source: 2026 China Automotive Forum
Around this idea, XPeng redesigned the fresh graduate cultivation mechanism. New employees implement separate performance and promotion management for the first three years after joining, not sharing evaluation channels with social recruitment employees, hoping to leave a more complete growth cycle for young talent.
Changan Automobile focuses on a more upstream link of talent cultivation. Geng Yi believes that enterprises adjust product and technical directions every year, while school talent cultivation plans usually take several years to complete an update, and there is always a time lag between the two.
In the past, the talent cultivation of many enterprises started from recruitment; now, more and more enterprises are turning their eyes to schools.
Changan established an independent legal person-operated industry-education integration company, hoping to bring enterprise demands forward into the talent cultivation link, letting curriculum settings, practical training content maintain closer connections with industrial development.
In Geng Yi's view, enterprise participation in schooling is not to lock students in advance, but to hope that the people cultivated by schools can adapt to the industrial development pace faster.
Schools also feel this change. Wuhu Vocational and Technical University School of Automotive and Aviation Dean Peng Ding shared a realistic problem. Enterprises may launch multiple new products and technologies in a year, while school talent cultivation plan updates require longer cycles. When rapid industrial change becomes the norm, schools also need to continuously adjust curriculum systems, practical teaching, and school-enterprise cooperation methods.
Facing new demands proposed by enterprises, schools no longer first consider 'can they do it', but 'how to do it as soon as possible'.
This change is not just curriculum adjustment. More and more vocational colleges are starting to introduce real enterprise projects into the classroom, letting students contact actual enterprise R&D and production scenarios during the learning phase, and also allowing enterprises to participate in talent cultivation earlier.
Compared to training after recruitment, this method brings the cultivation cycle further forward. NIO saw another type of change. New businesses such as direct sales systems, battery swapping networks, user communities, etc., are constantly developing, also giving rise to a batch of new positions that did not exist before. For many positions, there are no mature talents in the market for direct recruitment; enterprises can only explore business and cultivate teams at the same time.
According to introductions, NIO established a complete talent system around values, including goal setting, performance evaluation, incentive feedback, etc., hoping to help employees grow continuously during business development.
Image Source: BYD
Looking at them together, although companies like XPeng, Changan, NIO chose different paths, the focus points are getting closer and closer. That is to say, compared to finding ready-made talent, enterprises are starting to invest more energy in building long-term talent supply capabilities.
In the past, automotive enterprises relied more on the market to solve talent problems. Today, more and more enterprises are starting to build their own talent systems. And this change is still continuing.
It can be seen that the discussion of the entire forum has exceeded recruitment itself. Engineers need to face new technical systems, enterprises need to adapt to global competition, universities are adjusting talent cultivation models, more and more automakers are starting to shift the cultivation system forward. The change in talent work almost runs through every link of automotive industry development.
In the past, the automotive industry discussed more about how many people are missing. Nowadays, enterprises are more concerned about what kind of people are needed, and how to cultivate such people faster. Understanding business, understanding strategy, understanding industrial directions, has become an important prerequisite for judging talent demand.
And when the automotive industry enters a new development stage, talent competition also begins to enter a new stage.
