New forces in car manufacturing, hitting hard

The battle was even more brutal.

Author | Baoguo Temple

Editor | Lin Dong

Produced by | Auto K-Line

On April 1, the new-energy players once again dutifully laid out their “assets.” Afraid that if they were late, people would think they’re done for……

This market battle, one that leaves China’s auto industry feeling stifled, has fought itself to this point. For the new-energy players, a string of data at the beginning of every month is like oxygen.

If you manage to breathe it in, you can live a bit longer; if you can’t, you’re one step closer to suffocation.

The scorecards for March 2026 and the entire first quarter feel more like a “battlefield bulletin” than ever before.

With Huawei’s Harmony Zhixing yet to announce delivery volumes, Leapmotor has reclaimed the top spot. Nio has bared its fangs with nearly 136% year-over-year growth. Ideal Auto has sounded an alarm amid a slight year-over-year increase. XPeng Group’s year-over-year decline looks a bit uncomfortably stark. And Xiaomi, trapped in the “gap period” between old and new products, can’t seem to break out.

New-energy players know that in this elimination round, every additional car sold is often a chunk of meat forcibly taken from the opponent’s plate.

01

In March, Leapmotor delivered 50,000 vehicles, with month-on-month and year-over-year growth of 34.87% and 78.25%, respectively. This success made Zhu Jiangming burst with joy, so he went out and posted a video.

In the first quarter, this new-energy player with such strong momentum delivered over 110,000 vehicles—1.5 ten-thousand more than Ideal Auto—projecting an “overview from atop all the mountains” kind of presence.

But what’s even more worth paying attention to isn’t the number itself, but where it comes from.

Through a series of product deployments in advance, in the 100,000-level market, Leapmotor has used a high-configuration, low-price strategy to strongly squeeze competitors and grab market share; while in the 200,000 or even 300,000-level markets, the “half-price Ideal” strategy successfully drew in family users with limited budgets. This approach of “harvesting upward while cutting downward” has been effective.

What makes competitors even more tense is Leapmotor’s overseas layout.

Backed by Stellantis Group’s foundation in Europe, Leapmotor’s European Innovation Center opened in Munich—the home turf of BMW. Leapmotor’s B10 also rolled off the line at the Myanmar SKD factory, and it has even begun talks with Stellantis about using the latter’s idle capacity to produce electric vehicles in Canada.

Leapmotor isn’t only stealing market share from domestic rivals—it’s also starting to come into its own on the international stage. Judging by this, Leapmotor’s ascent to the top really is a set of battle results carved away from competitors, one cut at a time.

02

Another highlight in March—Nio—delivered 35,500 vehicles, soaring 135.96% year over year. In total for the first quarter, cumulative deliveries reached 83,500 vehicles, up 98.28% year over year. Both growth rates ranked No. 1 among new-energy players.

If you break it down, in March the Nio brand delivered 22,500 vehicles, Lejiado delivered 6,877 vehicles, and Firefly delivered 6,119 vehicles. Although Lejiado is no longer as dazzling as it was when the L90 just launched, and Firefly’s performance in its segment is also lukewarm, within Nio, these two sub-brands can already contribute one-third of sales.

And the three brands and three price bands are like three different knives.

The Nio brand targets the high-end market above 300,000 yuan. The all-new ES8 won the sales crown for large SUVs for three consecutive months. This means that within the surrounding ring of traditional fuel-powered large SUVs and extended-range large SUVs, Nio has forced open a pure-electric gap.

The Lejiado brand targets the 200,000–250,000 yuan family market. This price band was originally home to Ideal L6, XPeng G6, and BYD Tang. For every Lejiado sold, it takes a cup of “profit” from those rivals’ plates.

The Firefly brand moves into the entry-level market below 150,000 yuan. A 130.3% month-over-month growth rate in March may have made Li Bin see the potential to “harvest” price-sensitive users.

Nio’s “multi-brand” strategy is, in essence, a three-dimensional “siege tactic.” It launches attacks from three price bands at once, so each opponent will at least be harassed by one of those “units.” The key question, however, is whether Nio can—through the new-product offensive starting in April—maintain this momentum for a long time.

03

Compared with Leapmotor and Nio, Ideal Auto delivered 41,100 vehicles in March, up only 11.94% year over year. In cumulative deliveries for the first quarter, it reached 95,100 vehicles, up just 2.45% year over year—almost standing still.

Ideal Auto’s official messaging emphasizes that i6 sales exceeded 24,000 vehicles in June and i8 improved by more than 100% month over month. But the core issue isn’t whether pure electric is selling well; it’s that Ideal’s extended-range mainstream base is being chewed away by competitors.

Leapmotor, AITO, Zeekr, Avatr, Deepal……competitors are launching attacks on Ideal’s interior from every price band.

The reason Ideal is stuck in such a predicament is simple: the “cake” in the extended-range track is no longer big enough to keep dividing, and its own pure-electric “cake” hasn’t been baked yet. The current growth of i6 and i8 is still not sufficient to make up for the losses of the L series.

Even more dangerous is that those labels—“dad cars,” “family space,” and “extended-range without anxiety”—are being copied by competitors one by one, and in some cases surpassed.

If Ideal can’t bring out truly overwhelming technology on the new L9 to be launched in the second quarter, then the speed at which it slides down from the position of “No. 1 among new-energy players” will only keep accelerating.

04

XPeng Group has become the only new-energy player currently experiencing negative year-over-year growth in both monthly and quarterly terms. Monthly deliveries were 27,400 vehicles, down 17.44% year over year; cumulative deliveries in the first quarter were 62.7 thousand vehicles, down 33.32% year over year.

XPeng Group’s pain is essentially a dilemma of being “attacked from both sides.” Downward, it can’t defend the value-for-money market; upward, it can’t break into the premium premium price tier. However, XPeng Group’s strategic focus is shifting—from “selling more cars” to “doing more things.”

Second-generation VLA intelligent driving, the production of the Volkswagen-co-developed Vw-Union 08 (Andian 08), expansion into the Mexico market, the World Model X-World release, the IRON humanoid robot entering mass production within the year, and even changing its name from “XPeng Motors” to “XPeng Group”—in the short term, these deployments do indeed scatter resources and may even cause the capital market’s tolerance for declining sales to become lower and lower; but in the long run, they are undoubtedly “difficult yet correct.”

XPeng Group’s problem isn’t whether it can keep going; it’s that before completing a diversified transformation, the “ace card” of its auto business still needs to hold up. If sales continue to decline in the second quarter, the capital market’s patience may run out first.

05

As for the topic and traffic bearer—Xiaomi Auto—it delivered more than 20,000 vehicles again in March, with flat month over month and about a 31% year-over-year decline. Under pressure, Lei Jun’s recent frequency of appearing in public while traveling abroad has also been increasing.

It’s worth noting that the new-generation SU7 started deliveries on March 23, with cumulative deliveries exceeding 7,000 vehicles, but clearly this hasn’t yet contributed much incremental value to Xiaomi Auto.

On the surface, this is Xiaomi’s “gap period” between new and old products—something any brand is hard to avoid. But Xiaomi’s problem is far more than just the “gap period.” More deadly than the “gap period” is the quiet erosion of users’ trust in Lei Jun’s ability to build cars.

Over the past year, Xiaomi has repeatedly sparked controversies on the marketing front. The trust dividend brought by Lei Jun’s personal IP is being consumed little by little. And in the area of intelligent assisted driving, the issue is even more sensitive—so that in the minds of ordinary consumers, doubts have arisen about whether Xiaomi’s intelligent driving is really reliable.

Building trust takes years, while a trust collapse only takes a few disappointments. When users start to hesitate about whether what Lei Jun says can actually be delivered, the sense of trust that Lei Jun’s personal image gives to the Xiaomi brand has already developed cracks. And at this crucial moment, competitors won’t wait for you.

For Xiaomi, what matters more right now than sales numbers is whether it can use products and services to win back users’ trust.

06

The “silence” of Huawei Harmony Zhixing is not the first time. Based on past experience, “silence” often means sales performance isn’t satisfactory.

Judging from March sales performance of companies including Seres (20,300 vehicles, up 47.74% year over year), BAIC BluePark (13,600 vehicles, down 4.35% year over year), and ZhiJie announced by Chery (2,579 vehicles, down 74.2% year over year), it may also be the case.

With main models like AITO M9 already in the middle stage of their life cycle, they also face a joint siege from Ideal L9, Zeekr 9X, and Nio ES8, so their growth momentum has clearly weakened. Brands such as ZhiJie, Enjoying, and Shangi have not yet formed enough market noise. Even ZhiJie’s monthly sales are almost negligible among new-energy lineups that often sell tens of thousands.

Huawei’s channel efficiency, brand appeal, and technology halo once led to it being viewed as a “killer of new-energy players.”

But in fierce market competition, even the Huawei model that once felt like “peak upon appearance” has begun to feel competitive pressure. The “silence” of Harmony Zhixing, to some extent, is a snapshot of how tense the new-energy battleground has become—no one can remain undefeated forever in this melee.

07

In stark contrast to Harmony Zhixing’s silence is Zeekr’s high-profile charge.

In March, Zeekr delivered 29,300 vehicles, up 90.11% year over year; in cumulative first-quarter deliveries, it reached 77,000 vehicles, up 86.07% year over year. In the monthly sales volume tier of 30,000-plus, Zeekr is the one with the strongest growth rate. More importantly, Zeekr’s sales growth almost entirely comes from tearing pieces off competitors’ defensive lines.

Zeekr 007 goes head-to-head directly with Xiaomi SU7 and XPeng P7 in the 200,000–250,000 pure-electric sedan market. Zeekr 009 fights neck-and-neck in the pure-electric MPV field with Denza D9 and XPeng X9. And Zeekr 9X and 8X have rapidly carved out their own territory in the luxury SUV market.

What’s terrifying about Zeekr isn’t how many it sells, but that it “hits the mark.”

It hasn’t blindly expanded its product line. Instead, in every sub-segment, it deploys highly aggressive products, and relies on Great Gili’s supply chain and manufacturing advantages to keep costs at a level that new-energy players can hardly reach.

While Harmony Zhixing is still tangled in the organizational structure of “who makes the cars” and “who sells the cars,” Zeekr has already used a clear offense-and-defense system to stand firm within the new-energy lineup.

Views of AutosKline:

When traditional automakers see their sales fall, they can lay off employees, shut down factories, and sell assets to extend survival. But new-energy players have no way out—they don’t have fuel-car business to provide blood transfusions, they don’t have dealer networks as buffer zones, and they don’t have a century-old brand loyalty that can be drawn down and consumed.

For new-energy players, every month’s sales data is like a life-or-death vote.

In 2026’s new-energy player table, it’s even more like a battlefield. Either you grab “oxygen” and keep living, or you suffocate and fall.

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