Shanghai International Automobile City: X‑GAME 2026 Smart New Energy Vehicle Big Data Competition Kicks off with EVDATA Box Launched

At the 9th Digital China Summit held on April 28, Shanghai International Automobile City (Group) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shanghai International Automobile City") and Shanghai New Energy Vehicle Public Data Collection and Monitoring Research Center (EVDATA) launched the X‑GAME 2026 Smart New Energy Vehicle Big Data Competition. Meanwhile, EVDATA Box was officially unveiled as China's first cooperation space for automotive data research and education. These are aimed at fostering talent development and enhancing public digital literacy through the integration of industries and academia as well as data‑driven approaches, to consolidate the talent foundation for developing new quality productive forces empowered by data elements.

Nine Years of Arduous Efforts: X‑GAME Aims to Establish a Benchmark Platform for Talent Cultivation Through Competition

As the first competition focusing on the data of smart new energy vehicles, X‑GAME has been held for eight consecutive years. Over 100 universities, colleges and enterprises around the world have participated in the competitions, with more than 3,000 participating teams and over 4,400 registered participants. X-GAME is evolving into one of the most influential annual events in China's smart new energy vehicle data sector.

In terms of competition categories, X‑GAME 2026 will deeply integrate artificial intelligence technologies. While retaining the two well‑established categories ("Academic Application" and "Marketing Practice"), this year's session added a new one themed "Industry‑Academia Co‑Creation", encouraging participants to develop teaching courseware or open‑source toolkits around data cleansing, traffic analysis and other themes. In terms of participants, besides participants from universities and enterprises, X‑GAME 2026 will strongly encourage teachers from education institutions at other levels to take part, aimed at facilitating the practical application of relevant outcomes in the automotive industry and education institutions. In terms of open‑source ecosystem, this year's competition will build a new closed‑loop mode for data research and algorithm open‑sourcing through shared high‑quality datasets and open‑source algorithm tools.

A photo taken during the launch ceremony of X-GAME 2026
[Photo via Shanghai International Automobile City]

A New Breakthrough: EVDATA Box Officially Unveiled as China's First Cooperation Space for Automotive Data Research and Education

Concurrent with the launch of X‑GAME, EVDATA Box, China's first cooperation space for automotive data research and education, was officially unveiled, with calls for recruiting partners from universities as well as enterprises along the related industry chains. EVDATA Box is designed to break barriers hampering the circulation of automotive research data, and build a new service model featuring joint research, co‑creation and co‑development, to provide a new path for data collaboration among universities, enterprises and research institutions.

Relevant promotional materials of EVDATA Box
[Photo via Shanghai International Automobile City]

With over a decade of arduous efforts, Shanghai International Automobile City has built a nationally-leading new energy vehicle data platform system, with access to over 2 million new energy vehicles, a daily data increment of over 2 billion records, and petabyte‑level storage capacity. In the first year of the 15th Five‑Year Plan period, leveraging both X‑GAME and EVDATA Box, Shanghai International Automobile City will build a full‑chain digital talent training system covering basic education, higher education, vocational training and industrial practice. It will continuously promote the deep integration of digital technologies and the automotive industry, to develop its own solutions for the development of Shanghai's "Five Centers" (an international economy center, international finance center, international trade center, international shipping center, and international science and technology innovation center) and the high‑quality development of China's automotive industry.

(Written by: Xu Wenzhe, Yang Jie, and Wang Yuchen)