The trend of having more and more intelligent vehicles is making automotive software the new territory for future industrial competition, a business insider said.

"Software plays an increasingly important role for car makers and suppliers as their vehicles become more automated and connected," said Zou Lujun, vice-president and managing director of Elektrobit in China, a global supplier of embedded and connected software products for the automotive industry.

According to Zou, the development of software is rapidly reshaping the automotive industry as a whole, and the weighing of software in a vehicle is rising considerably. It is projected the value of software will rise from about 10 percent of the total vehicle for the moment to 40 percent by 2025, with more hardware being replaced by software.

As Baidu Inc, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd are making their forays into the automotive sector, conventional auto makers are also actively strengthening their capabilities in software, Zou added.

A McKinsey report suggested China has the potential to become the world's largest market for autonomous vehicles. The sector may generate $1.1 trillion from mobility services and $0.9 trillion from sales of autonomous vehicles by 2040.