China Smart Door and Electric Tailgate Market Research Report, 2025
Smart Door Research: Driven by Automatic Doors, Knock-Knock Door Opening, etc., the Market Will Be Worth Over RMB100 Billion in 2030.
This report analyzes and researches the installation, market size, competitive landscape, suppliers’ strategies, OEMs’ strategies, and development trends of various intelligent automotive door products. The main research scope includes:
Smart doors: installation, market size, and vehicle model cases, including electric suction doors, automatic doors, hidden electric door handles, electric sliding doors, etc.;
Electric tailgates: system structure, highlight functions, supply chain, competitive landscape, installation, market size, supply relationships, foot-activated tailgates, AR smart tailgates, etc.;
Smart access modes: PEPS, mobile APP-controlled doors, digital keys, gesture recognition, face recognition, voice control, fingerprint recognition, finger vein recognition, touch recognition, password locks, etc.;
Innovative door designs and material technologies: innovative designs such as frameless doors and pillarless suicide doors; lightweight door materials and technical solutions; market size, production processes, competitive landscape, and suppliers of door seal strips;
Application of smart doors by OEMs: smart door solutions of OEMs such as Tesla, Li Auto, AITO, Yangwang, NIO, Xiaomi, and Hongqi;
Smart door suppliers: smart door products and supported vehicle models of suppliers such as Brose, Magna, WINBO-Dongjian, Minth, and Yanfeng.
1. Pace of Car Door Intelligence Quickens, and the Market Will Be Valued at More Than RMB100 Billion in 2030.
Based on traditional car doors, smart doors enable functions such as automatic door opening/closing, environmental perception and slope hovering, and integrate multiple functions (e.g., CMS and ambient lighting), as well as the function of interconnection with a cockpit, by adding door control units, actuators, sensors, door checks, electric suction locks, and other components. In 2025, China's smart door market will further grow and is expected to be worth RMB60 billion, a figured projected to surpass RMB100 billion in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 10.9%.
Seen from sub-functions, all show an upward trend, facilitating intelligent upgrading of car doors
DOW (Door Opening Warning): This segment has shown the strongest performance. From January to October 2025, the installations increased by 2.615 million vehicles, a year-on-year growth rate of 62.2%, and the installation rate surged from 23.7% to 36.6%.
Frameless Doors: As a core configuration to enhance the sportiness of vehicles, their installations have grown steadily. From January to October 2025, the year-on-year growth rate was 36.0%, and the installation rate increased to 12.3%.
Automatic Doors: Although the base is small, they gain big momentum, with a year-on-year growth rate of 29.6%, indicating rapider penetration of high-level intelligent configurations into the high-end market.
APP-Controlled Doors: As the most popular intelligent function, the installations increased to 12.305 million vehicles from January to October 2025, with an installation rate of 66.0%, having become a standard configuration for most new cars.
Electric Tailgates: This function continues to gain popularity, with the installations increasing by 13.4% year-on-year and the installation rate reaching 45.0%.
Hidden Electric Door Handles: Despite the sector facing a design transformation, it still achieved a year-on-year growth of 21.6% from January to October 2025, with the installations exceeding 4 million vehicles and the installation rate rising to 21.6%.
Electric Sliding Doors: Mainly serving the MPV and mid-to-large SUV markets, they saw the year-on-year growth rate of 17.0%, and the installation rate steadily increasing to 3.2%.
Electric Suction Doors: This segment has remained stable, with the installations exceeding 1.31 million vehicles from January to October 2025.
2. Automatic Doors Achieve Integration and Linkage with ADS to Improve Obstacle Avoidance Accuracy.
Automatic doors are electric doors with automatic opening and closing functions, commonly found in such vehicles as luxury cars and MPVs. They control door opening and closing with buttons. They are a configuration that enhances comfort and safety.
In Avatr 11’s case, a user lightly pulls the door handle and the door opens automatically; the user presses the close button after getting in the car and the door closes automatically. If this posture is a bit cumbersome, the user can simply step on the brake and the door will close by itself, achieving a combination of technology and usability.
From January to October 2025, automatic doors were installed in 140,000 passenger cars in China, a year-on-year growth of 29.6%. Currently, this function is mainly equipped on models above RMB300,000, such as AITO M9/M8, Li MEGA, MAEXTRO S800, and Zeekr 001 FR.
At the technical level, automatic doors are shifting from single hardware control to system-level integration. For example, the intelligent electric doors equipped on the AITO M9 adopt four-door independent ECUs and digital variable-frequency brushless motors, reducing the system weight by 15% and noise by 20%. In terms of perception hardware, radars used instead of traditional ultrasonic radars can accurately detect low obstacles 5-10cm high, and cooperate with the response capability of brushless motors to achieve instant stopping when encountering obstacles. In addition, the door system has achieved integration and linkage with intelligent driving systems such as HUAWEI ADS, improving obstacle avoidance accuracy by sharing vehicle perception data.
3. Technical Route of Hidden Door Handles Shifts to Semi-Hidden and Mechanical Redundancy
From the perspective of current market dynamics and policy orientation, the hidden door handle industry is experiencing a critical transition period from rapid expansion to rational adjustment. On the one hand, policies mandatorily regulate safety bottom lines; on the other hand, the technical route is converging towards "semi-hidden + mechanical redundancy".
At the policy level, stricter global supervision has become an inevitable trend. China has taken the lead in setting a red line for the withdrawal of "fully hidden" designs, reshaping industry safety standards.
The "Safety Technical Requirements for Automotive Door Handle" (draft for comments) issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2025 clearly prohibits fully hidden designs from 2027, and mandates that external door handles retain an operating space of not less than 60mm×20mm×25mm and a mechanical redundancy mechanism to solve the rescue problem of "difficulty in opening doors" after collision and power failure;
The Netherlands and the United States have strengthened supervision on "openable after power failure" through investigations into Tesla door failure cases;
The new protocol of the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) taking effect in 2026 requires that external electric door handles of electric vehicles must remain operable after an accident to ensure that rescuers can quickly enter the vehicle;
The new rules of the Australasian New Car Assessment Programme (ANCAP) in 2026 require that cars equipped with electric door handles (powered by a vehicle's 12V battery) must immediately place all side door handles in an extended/ready-to-open state after a collision.
Under this trend, fully hidden designs without mechanical emergency mechanisms will gradually withdraw from the market, and semi-hidden designs will become the compliant mainstream. OEMs such as NIO, Audi, Volkswagen, Tesla, and AITO have shifted to the semi-hidden route.
NIO ET7 adopts a dual solution of "capacitive sensing + mechanical unlocking", which not only retains convenience of touch-to-open doors but also allows the handles to pop out by pressing the front end when the power is off;
The door handle design of the new A5L released by FAW Audi adopts a semi-hidden design with a built-in micro switch. The external door handle has a built-in emergency pull cord for quick door opening. In addition, FAW Audi has adopted a semi-hidden door handle design on its latest PPC and PPE platform-based models, and this design will be available to subsequent models based on the two platforms;
Volkswagen Anhui and BYD among others have shifted to the "semi-hidden + emergency paddle" solution;
Tesla is also redesigning its door handle system;
New-generation models such as new AITO M7, M8, Zeekr 9X, and Geely Galaxy M9 have abandoned fully hidden door handles.
4. Driven by HIMA, NIO, and Yangwang, Knock-Knock Door Opening Function Enters Mass Production.
In 2025, Knock-Knock, a light tap-to-open technology, came into mass production, with an installation rate of 0.6%. At this stage, the Knock-Knock function is mainly equipped by OEMs such as Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance (HIMA), NIO, Yangwang, and Li Auto:
Yangwang U7/U9 apply this technology to door opening;
HIMA series (LUXEED R7, STELATO S9T, AITO M8, etc.) mainly apply it to frunk opening;
Brands such as NIO (ES8, ONVO L90) and Li Auto (i6) have followed up, applying it to frunk opening. The application of this technology has evolved from exclusive supply to industry popularization.
The Knock-Knock technology is developed by Taifang Technology. Users can trigger the opening of the frunk, trunk, or doors by lightly tapping with their fingers, without the need to install additional physical buttons, which not only ensures the aesthetic appearance of the car body design but also greatly improves operational convenience. This technology realizes interaction by utilizing the physical principle that users tapping the car body structure can generate elastic waves.
In terms of application scenarios, the application of this technology has increased the frequency of use in specific scenarios. In the case of ONVO L90, a model equipped with Knock-Knock, the proportion of car owners using the frunk every week is as high as 93%. In the future, Knock-Knock technology will also be gradually extended to components such as charging ports and sunroofs, and is expected to be deeply integrated with intelligent cockpits, becoming a standard function of vehicle intelligence.
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