搜尋歷史
熱門搜尋
經銷商登入 / 註冊
Establishing a restructuring and clearance environment that conforms to market mechanisms, maintaining the domestic car market size at 25 million units, and achieving compliant overseas expansion will be important themes for the automotive industry in the future.
By Zhijia Net Ling Jiang
Edited by Langlang Mountain and Mingzhi Mountain
"Discussing how the automotive industry develops this year is not easy to discuss."
This is what Zhang Yongwei, Chairman of Car Hundred Association, said at the beginning of this year's media exchange meeting on September 15.
This is indeed an awkward year: the car market overall declined in the first half of 2026, the average profit margin of the automotive manufacturing industry fell to around 1.5%, a ten-year low; 8 out of 15 listed car companies lost money.
Meanwhile, since the beginning of this year, over 600 new car models have been launched domestically, averaging nearly 3 per day; China's new energy vehicle sales exceeded 7.4 million units, approaching half of total vehicle sales.
On one hand, a vibrant new car market; on the other hand, the dilemma of increased revenue but not increased profit caused by price wars.
How to break through has become a theme of anxiety for the entire automotive industry.
01.
Downward trend becomes inevitable, restructuring and stability are themes of the car market
"Everyone should no longer expect a rapid growth like after 2008. The phase of pulling industry development with high growth in the automotive industry has passed."
In Zhang Yongwei's judgment for 2026: the 2026 car market will not exceed the high growth level of 2025. One can hope for a recovery in September and October, but the whole year will be downward.
2026 is an adjustment period. From a long cycle perspective, this is because the Chinese automotive industry is undergoing a conversion of old and new drivers.
The traditional development driver, which used to be dominated by fuel cars, is shifting to new tracks of electrification, intelligence, and globalization. This basic direction has been formed and is irreversible.
But the new track forces three traditional growth paths to narrow simultaneously – winning by scale gets hurt first when volatility comes; winning by high-intensity investment can't be supported by profit; winning by capital market blood transfusion, money's attention has shifted to AI and Embodied Intelligence.
"After high growth, the industry may face deep adjustment, which is strong competition."
He clearly stated that "stable demand" must be monitored dynamically. When demand continues to decline, "there must be strong policies to support it."
This judgment echoes the "15th Five-Year Plan" for Intelligent Connected New Energy Vehicle Industry Development released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and eight other departments on September 11. In this plan, regulators proposed capacity warnings for the first time and requested strengthened supervision over whole vehicle and battery capacity and merger and restructuring, curbing inappropriate local investment incentives.
On the day before the media communication meeting, FAW and GAC simultaneously announced signing a "Letter of Intent": GAC will purchase part of the equity of a certain whole vehicle joint venture held by FAW by issuing additional A-shares, and raise supporting funds, while FAW becomes GAC's second largest shareholder.
This news was interpreted by the industry as the long-rumored "North-South Toyota Merger" is about to be confirmed.
Earlier on September 11, the fourth creditors' meeting for Neta Auto parent company Hozon New Energy's bankruptcy reorganization case disclosed the "Reorganization Plan (Draft)": Zhejiang Taiyi Shenglian plans to invest 3 billion Yuan to acquire about 70.62% equity and become the controlling shareholder.
Of the funds, 1.167 billion Yuan is used to clear debts and bankruptcy expenses, 1.833 billion Yuan supplements working capital. The plan goes in three steps: first resume production of Neta X to focus on overseas markets (annual sales target 10,000 units), restore after-sales service, then expand scale and strive for global listing.
Regarding the capacity warning first proposed in the "15th Five-Year Plan" and the moves of car companies like SAIC, GAC, and Neta in the capital market, Zhang Yongwei judged: "In the coming years, industrial restructuring will attract more attention. 'Currently, there are indeed more favorable conditions.'"
In his opinion, restructuring often happens during industry adjustment periods. The next few years are indeed a window period for promoting restructuring, but the method must shift from the accustomed administrative "pulling and matching" to market-based restructuring. The Neta case follows this direction.
The core prerequisite for market-based restructuring is the "clearance" he repeatedly emphasized:
"Enterprises that cannot operate should no longer rely on massive fiscal funding infusions to prolong their lives; local governments must respect the laws."
"Many failed cases are continuously prolonging life. After prolonging life, they still die, and a large amount of fiscal funds are used."
Exit mechanisms are not signs of industry failure, but prerequisites for the next round of growth. Whoever blocks clearance is wasting public funds.
The carrier for the clearance environment is the unified national market. Policies should be combined with the construction of the unified national market to create an environment where market mechanisms play a role in restructuring.
"With the environment in place, the article on restructuring will naturally be written."
During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, to ensure the benign development of the automotive industry, its overall scale should be maintained at 35 to 40 million units, of which the domestic market annual sales should be around 25 million units, which is an important task to stabilize the internal circulation; exports plus overseas production will shift from speed to quality, with a reasonable target of 10 to 15 million units per year.
Why are 25 million units so important?
Zhang Yongwei calculated: The automotive industry contributes about 10% to total domestic demand. If 1 million units drop off annually, the impact on the country's expansion of domestic demand is huge.
The hot or cold of the automotive market is no longer a pure industry issue, but one of the pillar industries of China's macroeconomy. When demand continues to decline, policies must intervene to support the floor in time.
In Zhang Yongwei's view, the homework on the demand side is far from done: the path of fiscal subsidies for large-scale trade-ins is basically a dead end, local finance bears the major part, space is limited; the stock market is flooded with models, homogenized competition, no room to expand.
The real work lies at both ends: downscale to lower-tier markets; second and third-tier cities and rural areas need vehicles with better cost-performance ratios; upscale to high-end effective markets:
"Some cars selling over 1 million can sell very well. It's not that there is no demand, but we haven't dug it out."
Additionally, the usage link needs further policy loosening: charging, used cars, car health management, solving value retention issues – there is still work to do on this chessboard of domestic demand.
But in the domestic car market, will the clustering of new car launches really exacerbate involution-style competition?
Zhang Yongwei stated that this must be viewed from two aspects: development cycles compressed from 24 months to 12 months, cost-performance getting higher and higher, this basic direction cannot be denied, what foreign peers criticize is that Chinese cars are cheap and fast; but small facelifts pretending to be new cars are unnecessary.
His prescription is classification – distinguish cars with real platform innovation from "new" cars packaged by the sales side.
However, he emphasized that for the governance of the car market, it is better to guide than to block: rushing in will inevitably lead to disorder. The automotive industry has entered a very complex adjustment period. Policies must be implemented according to categories. A one-size-fits-all approach will only cause inadvertent harm.
02.
Going overseas is incremental growth, but also a risk exposure
Going overseas is the most important strategic opportunity in Zhang Yongwei's eyes, and also the area he talked about most concretely.
According to estimates, exports this year are close to 10 million units. "What is happy is that exports provided strong support when domestic demand adjusted. What is worrying is that 10 million units is not a small data, others are not adapted, we are not adapted either."
Political geopolitical choices, tariffs that only increase, non-tariff barriers for tech transfer, EU Industrial Accelerator Act, and tightening localization requirements in Southeast Asian countries. Four layers of hurdles are being added step by step.
But the risks of going overseas must be faced directly.
Just one day before the press conference, the BYD Malaysia person in charge confirmed that the originally planned self-built whole vehicle factory located in Tanjung Malim, Perak State is no longer advancing, but instead relying on local CKD partners to continue assembly – this factory was officially announced in high profile in August 2025, planning investment of 1.3 billion Ringgit, annual capacity of 50,000 units, but later stalled due to Malaysia tightening industrial protection policies (requiring local selling price not lower than 100,000 Ringgit).
During the same period, the mass production time of its Szeged, Hungary factory was also postponed to the fourth quarter of 2026.
Zhang Yongwei stated frankly that the biggest risk for car companies going out is heavy asset investment:
"Investing billions, once local political situations change or policies towards China change, this is our biggest risk."
"Go less to high-risk areas, try not to take this path with heavy assets."
The prerequisite for avoiding risk is compliance, and one country one rule – cannot force local employees to overtime, not meeting local employee ratio is illegal employment, the domestic set of "construct first then approve" does not work overseas.
Facing multiple risks of going overseas, his solution is multiple paths running parallel:
Firmly build world-class brands and enterprises, this is the historical mission of an automotive powerhouse;
Localization does not have to rely only on new heavy asset construction, acquisitions, leases, and contract manufacturing are all valid;
Use technology licensing and joint venture entrustment for cooperation empowerment, turning zero-sum competition into competitive cooperation;
Leverage multinational enterprises in China to shift from "In China, For China" to "In China, For the World".
Besides brands, he also pointed out a long-term weakness of Chinese car companies: after-sales service.
China's motorcycle industry previously had lessons going overseas, sell and forget, after-sales debt; now the after-sales system for EVs and smart cars overseas needs to start from scratch:
"The subject that car companies going overseas need to desperately supplement is the after-sales system. Before going overseas, they must do a good job in guidance and management domestically."
He revealed that Car Hundred Association will launch the "New Automotive Lifestyle Global Project" this year, exporting the lifestyle of Chinese new energy vehicles overseas, using C-end recognition to force the overseas market to open up to Chinese industry.
03.
Intelligence is the trump card for Chinese cars in overseas competition
After electrification peaks, differentiation has only one direction:
"Whether it's the product or the enterprise's competitiveness, it all relies on intelligence. This is exactly the trump card for Chinese car companies in domestic competition and also international competition."
Zhang Yongwei believes that nowadays intelligence has become a basic capability of enterprises. Making cars must have intelligence capabilities. As for how to build capabilities, there can be multiple paths.
He recognizes two business forms for intelligent driving: strategic companionship deep cooperation with intelligent driving enterprises, or internalizing external capabilities through capital binding.
But for the cockpit link, car companies must keep it in their own hands because it reaches the C-end directly and is the most core link of ecological experience. There are chips, underlying software, operating systems in the cockpit. These can be divided, but the construction and operation of the cockpit ecosystem is an important competitiveness for car companies' intelligence.
In the battery field, Zhang Yongwei agrees with Academician Ouyang Minggao's relevant conclusion: the dominant position of Lithium Iron Phosphate liquid batteries remains unchanged, look at hybrid solid-liquid and sodium-ion for the next two years, all-solid-state discusses scale only from 2030 to 2035.
He believes the real variable in the battery industry lies in the landscape: whole vehicle factories are intervening in batteries through technology definition, joint ventures, wholly-owned, and investment methods:
"This will redefine industry relationships. This is an inevitable trend."
As for the 2 million tons of retired batteries in 2030, he believes recycling has reached the commercialization critical point: black powder, separators, electrolytes can all be recycled. The technology routes are solved,
"Battery recycling will become a big industry." China's solutions and policy systems in the recycling field are being seriously studied by Europe and Southeast Asia.
04.
AI on board, and the four explosion points in the next two years
On technical highlights, Zhang Yongwei ranked the explosion points for the next two years:
The first thing AI monetizes is the cockpit. He believes "Next year must be the AI Cockpit Era", the sign is mass production of many cockpit Agents, entering interactive companionship mode from retrieval-style APP mode.
The organizational form of enterprises enters "Silicon-Carbon Symbiosis" afterwards: one carbon-based employee drives several silicon-based AI employees to work in parallel, which is becoming the norm for whole vehicle factories and parts enterprises.
In terms of intelligent driving, L3 multi-domain pilot is clear, L4 enters commercialization acceleration in four scenarios: Robotaxi, highway trunk logistics formation, unmanned mining trucks, functional unmanned vehicles. "Unmanned equipment will be in a state of explosive commercial application in the next two years."
Chip computing power enters the 1000 TOPS era, cockpit-driving integration rushes towards 2000 TOPS, intelligent driving large models go from two-stage end-to-end, one-stage end-to-end, to a hybrid architecture where VLA and world models coexist: "AI autonomous driving R&D speed has significantly accelerated."
In infrastructure construction, from January to July this year, automotive charging and swapping electricity consumption approached 100 billion kWh, accounting for 1.59% of total social electricity consumption. Cars have solved the charging anxiety problem.
The crux of why vehicle-to-grid (V2G) pilots have not been promoted for many years lies in the lack of operating entities and the inability to close the business model. "A batch of new entities must be cultivated to connect scattered vehicle participants with the power grid."
At the end of all judgments, he falls on "The Second Growth Curve":
Supported by new automotive hardware platforms, extend to embodied intelligence, low-altitude, energy storage, new services; domestic and international markets must both be gained; enterprises must form their own AI capabilities from technology to management. A parts enterprise once calculated for him: the vehicle business unit value is 2000 USD, robots 500 USD. Embodied intelligence may become a new growth point for automotive enterprises in not distant years.
05.
"Based on the new development pattern to achieve new growth of the automotive industry"
Standing at the intersection of the beginning of the "15th Five-Year Plan", Car Hundred Association's judgment on the automotive industry is clear and calm: the industry will no longer be saved by high growth. Only two things can save the industry – let those who should exit exit gracefully, and let true innovators make money.
This is also the starting point for the theme and agenda design of the Car Hundred Association Annual Meeting and High-Level Forum on Intelligent Electric Vehicle Development (2027).
According to official news, the Car Hundred Association Annual Meeting and High-Level Forum on Intelligent Electric Vehicle Development (2027) will be held at the National Convention Center from January 22 to 24, 2027.
The theme of this forum is "Based on the new development pattern to achieve new growth of the automotive industry", the core points to "New Cycle, New Drive, New Ecosystem, New Space".
New Cycle, meaning the automotive industry says goodbye to the scale expansion phase, enters a new cycle led by frontier technology, parallel stock competition and internationalization, cross-border fusion empowerment;
New Drive, meaning solid-state batteries, high-level autonomous driving, AI large models accelerate landing, open up new tracks with frontier technology industrialization;
New Ecosystem, meaning deep integration of automobiles with energy, transportation, artificial intelligence, collaborative development of new formats such as smart cars, embodied robots, low-altitude economy;
New Space, meaning growth space extends to overseas markets, emerging consumption scenarios, and after-market services. These four jointly point to one goal, which is to achieve new growth of the automotive industry.
Around this theme, the forum further upgraded its organizational structure.
Shi Jianhua, Dean of Car Hundred Think Tank Research Institute, introduced that this forum's organizational structure for the first time added a Steering Committee. Members are industry experts and enterprise leaders, responsible for grasping the forum's strategic direction, reviewing core topics and agendas, ensuring the forum's authority and industry influence.
The forum will last three days, building a "1+1+1+N" conference system, including 1 high-level forum, 1 high-level seminar, 1 international forum, and multiple thematic forums.
Among them, open forums such as the high-level forum, international forum, and thematic forums will be held at the National Convention Center; the high-level seminar on the situation and policies of China's automotive industry development, where relevant departments, industry institutions, research institutes, and industry representatives are invited to participate, will be held at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse.
Shi Jianhua stated that in addition to further enriching the conference system, this forum also has six major characteristics:
First, based on strategic height, the forum theme tightly grasps the era characteristics of the new stage of automotive industry development;
Second, multi-dimensional conference system, with "High-level Forum + High-level Seminar" as dual core pillars, achieving a balance between open exchange and in-depth seminar;
Third, topics fit the actual development of the industry, widely soliciting practical experience and opinion demands from government, academia, upstream and downstream of the industrial chain;
Fourth, exhibition-integration linkage, setting up three major exhibition zones: whole vehicle, industrial chain supply chain, integrated intelligence;
Fifth, leverage the professional think tank advantage of Car Hundred Association Research Institute, during the conference will concentrate on releasing multiple heavyweight industry research reports;
Sixth, thematic forums widely absorb industry leading enterprises to co-build, jointly building a new ecosystem for high-end industrial dialogue.
Currently, all preparations for the forum are progressing in an orderly manner. The Car Hundred Association Annual Meeting and High-Level Forum on Intelligent Electric Vehicle Development (2027) will be based on the industry's new cycle, through high-level dialogue, policy seminars, international exchanges, and professional forums and other forms, gather wisdom from all parties in the industry, and jointly seek new growth paths for the automotive industry.
