Lightweighting of automobiles is an inevitable trend towards environmental protection, energy conservation, and low-carbon development. Replacing steel with plastic in automotive components is one of the important technical routes to achieve lightweighting. As a typical product replacing steel with plastic, the plastic tailgate can reduce the weight of the component module by 25~30%, while leveraging the advantages of plastic molding to achieve shapes that cannot be achieved through sheet metal stamping. Additionally, the advantage of integral molding of plastic parts reduces the number of sub-parts of the sheet metal tailgate and avoids appearance defects that may occur during welding of different sub-parts. The special production process of plastic tailgate can also enhance the production capacity of the host machine's production line to a certain extent. This article specifically conducts an in-depth analysis of the development history, product types and characteristics, and key manufacturing processes of automotive plastic tailgates, and introduces the technological outlook and development trends of plastic tailgates.