Chinese carmakers sold 0.3% of the new cars bought in Europe in 2020, yet by the first quarter of 2026 their share had climbed to 8%, a shift that is changing which brands European software companies need to be working with. AirConsole, the in-car gaming platform built by Zurich-based N-Dream, has now signed one of the fastest-rising of those brands, partnering with Zeekr, the premium electric car brand owned by China's Geely Auto Group. Zeekr is AirConsole's first partner inside Geely, with the two companies debuting the partnership together at the 2026 Paris Motor Show, which runs from 12 to 18 October at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles and drew more than 500,000 visitors at its last edition in 2024.
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Visitors to Zeekr's stand in Hall 5.2 can play AirConsole directly inside the infotainment system of the Zeekr 7GT, scanning a QR code on the screen so their own smartphones become game controllers without any extra hardware or setup. The headline game is PAC-MAN Championship Edition, brought to the car through AirConsole's partnership with Bandai Namco Entertainment, with the cabin's ambient lighting reacting to the action on screen so the whole car becomes part of the game. AirConsole will then roll out in select Zeekr models before the end of 2026, bundled into Zeekr Connected Premium, the brand's top-tier package of connected services.
Chinese Carmakers in Europe
Chinese brands have moved from the edge of Europe's car market to its centre in five years, with their share of new passenger car sales rising from 0.3% in 2020 to 3.1% in 2024 before nearly doubling to 6% in 2025, according to Inovev. The pace picked up again this year, as Chinese carmakers took 8% of the market in the first quarter of 2026, while Inovev expects that share to reach 12% to 15% by 2030 even with European tariffs of 17% to 38% in place on Chinese-built electric cars.
The shift is sharpest in electric cars, where Chinese brands passed 15% of Europe's EV sales in April 2026. That makes Zeekr a strategic partner for AirConsole rather than one more logo, because it gives the platform a place inside the group of carmakers that is gaining ground fastest with European buyers, at a time when software and in-car experience are central to how those brands compete.
Zeekr's Rise
Zeekr is one of the fastest-growing premium electric brands in the world, having started deliveries in October 2021 with just 6,007 cars that year before reaching 71,941 in 2022, 118,685 in 2023 and more than 222,000 in both 2024 and 2025, according to figures compiled on Wikipedia from company reports. Those five years add up to around 643,000 cars by the end of 2025, while Zeekr says it has now delivered more than 900,000 vehicles in total, which means it has delivered roughly a quarter of a million more in 2026 alone.
The brand pairs Geely's scale with European design and engineering, running research centres in Sweden, Germany and the UK alongside a design studio in Gothenburg, while it now sells cars in 22 European countries from Norway and Sweden to Spain, Italy and Poland. At the Paris show Zeekr is presenting its full European line-up, including the new flagship 9X luxury SUV, the 7X mid-size SUV, the compact X, the 001 shooting brake and the 7GT grand tourer that hosts the AirConsole demonstration.
Inside the Geely Group
The bigger prize behind this deal is the group Zeekr belongs to, since Geely Holding Group sold 4.12 million vehicles in 2025, up 26% on the year before, with 56% of them new-energy vehicles, across a family of brands that includes Geely Galaxy, Lynk & Co, Volvo Cars, Polestar, Lotus and Proton as well as Zeekr. Geely completed its buyout of Zeekr in December 2025 and took the brand off the New York Stock Exchange, which brings Zeekr fully inside a group that is increasingly sharing its technology and factories between brands.
For AirConsole, that structure matters because its first partnership with a Geely brand gives it a working reference inside one of the world's largest carmaking groups. If the integration proves itself in Zeekr's cars, the same software and partnerships could follow into sister brands that together sold millions more vehicles last year, from Volvo's 710,000 cars to Lynk & Co's 350,000.
Why the Car Is Becoming a Screen
The rise of electric cars is quietly creating time for entertainment, because every electric car has to stop and charge. Battery-electric cars made up 17.4% of new EU car registrations in 2025, up from 13.6% the year before, with their share reaching 19.7% in the first four months of 2026, which means close to one in every five new cars sold in the EU now runs on a battery.
A study of 2.4 million charging sessions found that drivers spend an average of 42 minutes at a paid non-Tesla fast charger, or 31 minutes once Tesla's network is included, while the average American driver already spends 60.4 minutes a day behind the wheel. AirConsole is built for exactly those parked moments, since most carmakers only allow its games while the vehicle is stationary, turning charging stops and waiting time into something passengers and drivers can share.
The Business of In-Car Gaming
Gaming is already one of the largest entertainment businesses in the world, with global games revenue passing $200 billion for the first time in 2025 at $201.6 billion, according to Newzoo, of which mobile games alone brought in $113.3 billion. AirConsole sits at the meeting point of that mobile habit and the car, because it uses the phone every passenger already carries as the controller while the car's own screen, speakers and lights deliver the game.
The in-car gaming market itself was worth $2.2 billion in 2023 and is expected to reach $5.2 billion by 2032, according to Global Market Insights, growing at about 10% a year as more carmakers add games to their infotainment systems. Carmakers are also finding ways to charge for it, as Volkswagen of America now includes AirConsole in its In-Vehicle Premium package, which costs $149 a year after a free trial, while AirConsole itself earns a fee for every vehicle that carries its technology.
AirConsole's Track Record
AirConsole moved into cars with BMW, which first offered its games in new 7 Series models in 2022, before signing carmakers at an accelerating pace since then. Volkswagen followed in 2024, Audi in June 2025, Porsche with the Macan in October 2025, Skoda with the Enyaq and Elroq in January 2026 and Tata Motors with the Sierra.ev in July 2026, while Volkswagen of America launched it on six 2027 models in September.
That run of deals has taken the platform from more than 4 million cars in July to more than 5 million today, with a growing shelf of licensed games that includes UNO Car Party, Pictionary, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Overcooked, Tetris and now PAC-MAN. N-Dream also has the backing of Indian automotive software group KPIT Technologies, which raised its stake in the company from 26% to nearly 90% in October 2025 and works with many of the world's carmakers on the software inside their vehicles.
Anthony Cliquot, chief executive of N-Dream, sees Zeekr's speed as the reason the two companies fit together. He describes the deal as a signal of where the next wave of in-car entertainment will come from, namely a new generation of carmakers that treat infotainment and in-car technology as a core part of the driving experience rather than an add-on.
Lothar Schupet, chief executive of Zeekr Europe, says the partnership gives the brand a chance to explore how gaming can become part of the connected experience in its cars, with the Paris show giving visitors a first-hand look at what that could mean for the time they spend inside a premium Zeekr.
What Comes Next
The Paris demonstration is the first public step, with AirConsole due to arrive in select Zeekr models before the end of 2026 as part of Zeekr Connected Premium. For AirConsole, the deal extends a platform that began with German premium brands into the Chinese carmakers that are winning a growing share of Europe's drivers, while giving Zeekr an entertainment layer that already works in more than 5 million cars. If the car really is becoming the next living room, as Cliquot argued when AirConsole first launched with BMW, then a seat inside Geely's group puts AirConsole in front of millions of the drivers most likely to spend their charging stops playing a game.
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