A rendering of startup automaker NIO's Eve, an automated, electric wagon coming to the U.S. in 2020 (NIO) NIO, a well-funded Shanghai-based automotive startup with operations in Silicon Valley and Europe, intends to sell its first autonomous electric car in the U.S. by 2020. The young company faces lots of competition in a global race to create game-changing 21st-century vehicles. Padmasree Warrior, NIO's U.S. CEO, showed off the Eve, a sleek, wagon-style model in a presentation webcast from SXSW in Austin, Texas. Despite a string of high-production value videos that underscored NIO's commitment to zero-pollution, stylish, AI-enabled cars, few specifics about Eve – which bears a resemblance to fellow startup Faraday Future's FF 91 electric crossover – were revealed during the press conference. Electric range wasn't discussed, though a technical spec sheet provided by the company indicates a target driving range of about 600 miles per charge.

When cars exit the tunnel of the next 15 years, they'll be like giant smartphones. Their sensors will capture sight, sound and motion and transmit the information to the Internet quickly and affordably. The $100-billion app economy built on data from smartphones would look small compared with the $750 billion in revenue produced around cars. The forecast has automakers buzzing. As they accelerate spending on developing self-driving cars, they're devoting enormous attention on what to do with data that those high-tech devices generate -- beyond making the drive automated.

In a four-story Bauhaus-style building west of Shanghai, nearly 500 engineers are working to put what they hope will be China's answer to a Tesla Motors Inc. TSLA -0.00 % electric car on the road. Their company, NextEV, currently doesn't have anything to sell. It plans to unveil its first electric car in 2017. "Our goal is to build a high-end, high-performance electric car for half the price of a Tesla car," said Li Bin, co-founder and chairman of NextEV. Counting Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. TCEHY -0.05 % as an investor, NextEV is part of an increasingly crowded industry as the world's biggest auto market welcomes a wave of new entrants--China's deep-pocketed Internet giants.