Car Market Mid-Year Exam: SAIC Regains Top Spot, Three Automakers' Overseas Growth Doubles

The first half of 2026, China's car market produced a somewhat complex performance report.

Data from the CPCA shows that domestic passenger vehicle cumulative retail sales reached 8.701 million vehicles from January to June this year, a year-on-year decrease of 20.2%. Affected by the contraction in total market volume, the sales growth rate for the vast majority of automakers slowed down in the first half, and annual growth targets came under pressure.

This is because the era where "delivery volume" determines ranking and success or failure has passed. With the fuel vehicle base accelerating its momentum loss, volatility in overseas policies intensifying, and the industry's average profit margin dropping to the 3.4% warning line, the competitive dimension of China's car market is shifting from "scale competition" to "structural generation gap".

Behind the sales figures, the invisible gap that truly determines life or death has already widened.

The sales landscape has changed again

Gasgoo statistics on the sales situation of nearly 20 automakers in the first half showed a clear step-like distribution.

SAIC Group returned to the sales summit with 2.045 million vehicles, becoming the only full-vehicle group to break through 2 million vehicles so far. This time SAIC returned to first place, relying on the combined efforts of independent brands, new energy vehicles, and exports, achieved through a "radical reform" upon itself.

BYD cumulative sales for the first half reached 1.809 million vehicles. Although the domestic market had declined, relying on overseas market growth, it welcomed a recovery momentum of 403,500 vehicles in June.

Geely (1.423 million) and Chery (1.358 million) are accelerating the chase from behind, further narrowing the gap with the top two. The top tier formed by these four no longer competes on how many of a single blockbuster car was sold, but on whose full industry chain turns faster and whose overseas channels are deployed deeper.

Compared to the blossoming of the top tier, the survival status of the second sales tier exposes the cruelest side of this elimination race: the incremental volume of new energy vehicles is starting to fail to fill the gap left by the decline in fuel vehicles.

Changan is like this, selling 1.196 million vehicles in the first half, a year-on-year decrease of 17.4%. The problem it faces is that the speed of the decline in the fuel vehicle front exceeds the replacement speed of new energy brands.

GAC Group cumulative sales for the first half reached 773,000 vehicles, up 2.4% year-on-year, with moderate performance, urgently needing a new blockbuster. Perhaps the Qijing brand, built with Huawei, could be the breakthrough. Great Wall (584,000) increased slightly by 2.5%, but under the double-pronged attack from rivals on plug-in hybrids and pure electric, the shortcoming of a low proportion of new energy vehicles continues to drag down the overall market.

In this dramatic structural change, the confrontation between the camps of emerging new forces and joint venture brands is exposing deeper differences.

New forces have mostly achieved impressive growth rates. Leapmotor sold 356,000 vehicles in the first half, soaring 65% year-on-year. Zeekr, NIO, and Harmony Intelligent also had fierce offensives, especially the former two with year-on-year growth rates exceeding 60%. However, brands like Li Auto and XPeng encountered sales declines due to insufficient new product competition.

NIO's sales breakthrough was largely thanks to mutual support from three major brands: NIO, Onvo, and Firefly. For example, in an environment where the industry generally relies on aggressive pricing to exchange price for volume, Onvo delivered 42,000 vehicles in the first half, and the average transaction price held above 240,000 yuan, achieving a balance between sales growth and price stability, helping NIO achieve significant improvement in performance fundamentals.

Conversely, foreign brands continue to face pressure in China. CPCA data shows that retail sales of mainstream joint ventures decreased by 34% in June. Among them, SAIC Volkswagen shrank by over 30% in the first half, and GAC Honda was directly halved to 68,000 vehicles. The core issue foreign brands face in China remains how to break the inertia of momentum loss caused by the contraction of the fuel vehicle base and achieve scale effects in the new energy market.

Saying goodbye to broad rises, new energy vehicles enter the structural competition stage

No denying, new energy vehicles remain the deciding factor for the overall car market. In June this year, the retail penetration rate of domestic new energy passenger vehicles soared to a historical high of 62.8%, while pure fuel vehicles plummeted by 42%. But upon closer inspection, the bonus period of broad rise in the new energy market has ended.

As CPCA Secretary General Cui Dongshu put it, the new energy market is sliding towards a polarization of "high-end explosion, low-end pressure".

Data is the most direct microscope. In June, wholesale sales of Class B pure electric vehicles surged by 37% year-on-year, while sales in the A00 class pure electric market, serving as entry-level commuter tools, were directly halved by 50%. Consumers no longer buy simply for green license plates or cheapness, but have focused their gaze on products with higher configurations and stronger intelligent capabilities.

In this structural reshaping, resources are accelerating to converge at the top. Only 20 new energy automakers achieved wholesale sales over 10,000 in June, yet they accounted for 94% of the market share. Among them, independent brands took over more than 60% of the share, emerging new forces split 26%, while the share left for mainstream joint venture brands was only 4.3%.

But even within independent brands holding absolute advantages, differentiation is intensifying.

BYD locks the leading position thanks to coverage of the full price range. Geely advanced on dual lines of plug-in hybrids and pure electric vehicles, with new energy scale reaching 800,000 in the first half, and penetration rate approaching 60%. In contrast, while new energy transformation at companies like Chery, Changan, and Great Wall is accelerating, penetration rates still hover around 30%.

And in the new forces camp, the generation gap in growth rates often depends on who can trickle down high-end technologies to the mainstream market.

Leapmotor is a typical representative, with June sales reaching 93,000, far exceeding Li Auto, XPeng, NIO, etc. The explosion of Leapmotor is essentially based on full-domain in-house R&D cost control capabilities, building an SUV product matrix in the core market under 200,000 yuan, turning intelligence and high configuration into inclusive products. This extremely lethal cost-performance strategy allowed it to expand its market share under the general market pressure on the low end.

Different from Leapmotor relying on a full-spectrum blockbuster to break out upwards, NIO is achieving technology spillover downwards through sub-brands. For example, its sub-brand Onvo leverages NIO's system technology and battery swapping network, bringing 900V high-voltage architecture, self-developed chips, and operating systems, originally belonging to flagship models, into the 200,000 to 300,000 yuan family vehicle market, solving refueling anxiety for pure electric users.

In contrast, due to new products being in a replacement vacancy period or lacking sufficient competition, growth rates for some automakers like Li Auto and XPeng slowed to varying degrees in the first half.

Market increments are accelerating to concentrate at top automakers. Players who can continuously produce blockbusters and build full-spectrum matrices are building competitive barriers higher and higher.

Overseas competition has entered the "deep water zone"

While reshaping the domestic market competition landscape, the overseas market has become the second growth pole that almost all automakers are vying for.

In June this year, domestic passenger vehicle exports surged 82.3% year-on-year to 877,000 vehicles, with new energy exports soaring 152.7% even more. Exports are no longer garnishes on automaker financial reports, but have become key variables influencing the overall market.

However, in the second half of going overseas, the focus of competition has shifted from "how many cars were exported" to "whether one can establish global operations and risk resistance capabilities". In other words, single trade-type exports are entering a downward phase, while overseas localization production and globalization system construction are becoming the invisible gap that truly widens the generation gap between enterprises.

In this global leap, the differentiation at the top has already begun to show signs.

Among the automakers, Chery remains a typical "global harvestor" domestically, with cumulative exports reaching 944,000 vehicles in the first half, achieving a high-speed growth of 71.5%. Its export scale ranks first in the domestic automotive industry, with overseas sales accounting for nearly 70% of total sales. The channel advantages formed in Latin America, the Middle East, and Russia have built a very thick survival foundation for Chery.

More worthy of attention are players like BYD who are completing the leap from exporting products to exporting systems. With overseas factories in Thailand, Brazil, etc., gradually starting production, BYD's overseas sales climbed to 789,000 vehicles in the first half, nearly doubling year-on-year. Its overseas sales have accounted for 40% of total sales. This approach of "building factories in the opponent's home base" is the best way to avoid tariff barriers and achieve localization rooting.

At the same time, Geely and Changan are also accelerating tactical shifts. Geely accelerated the overseas launch of affordable series like Starship, recording an export scale of 474,000 vehicles in the first half, with June alone breaking 100,000 vehicles. Changan pulled export growth by 35% to 402,000 vehicles through overseas efforts on new energy models like Deepal and Qiyuan.

While some are accelerating, others are bearing the pressure of defending their city. SAIC exported 735,000 vehicles in the first half. Although relying on the MG brand for deep cultivation in Europe, Southeast Asia, etc., maintained stable shipments, it has already shown signs of being overtaken by Chery and BYD in the landing pace of overseas localization capacity. With competitor localization factories in Europe and Southeast Asia gradually starting operations, if SAIC cannot quickly upgrade overseas system bonuses, its past first-mover advantage will face the risk of continuous erosion.

In the new forces camp, Leapmotor took another shortcut. It cooperated with the international giant Stellantis, leveraging the latter's global channel network and production bases. Its overseas scale quickly approached 100,000 vehicles in the first half, successfully walking a path of light assets and high-efficiency globalization.

XPeng is also accelerating the expansion of the overseas market. In the first half, its overseas sales reached 32,000 vehicles, up more than 70% year-on-year, increasing the proportion of total sales to about 20%. Chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng had explicitly stated the strategic goal of "half of sales coming from overseas in the next ten years".

XPeng tries to bet directly on the global battlefield by self-operating technology, putting intelligent advantages there. Currently, the results of this strategy are initially visible. But under the current international geopolitical environment, this will put extremely high cross-cycle requirements on the enterprise's overseas supply chain elasticity.

Especially, this year's demand fluctuations in some Middle East markets, and the uncertainty of the global trade environment, objectively tested the risk resistance cycles of each automaker. The traditional single trade model relying solely on domestic production and sea shipping exports, when facing overseas policy adjustments, has a relatively short defensive depth.

This also means that the focus of competition in the second half of going overseas is no longer the frequency of sea shipping logistics, but the construction and landing of overseas localization capacity.

How to break through the final exam in the second half?

The data of half a year is just the process. What the market truly cares about is: Can the sales targets set at the beginning of the year still be completed?

According to Gasgoo Auto Research Institute's forecast, China's passenger vehicle wholesale sales in 2026 will be about 29.634 million vehicles, a slight decrease of 1.4% year-on-year. The overall market is basically treading water, meaning any automaker's growth must snatch food from opponents' mouths. At the node of the first half ending, the gaps in completion rates among each family have already widened.

BYD has not publicly disclosed clear annual sales figures, but forecasts given by UBS and other institutions are around 5 million vehicles. Supporting this massive volume is domestic full price range product coverage and the continuous release of overseas capacity. With the production launch of factories such as Thailand and Brazil, BYD's overseas expansion has upgraded from product output to system output.

Among automakers that have disclosed specific goals, Geely and Chery have higher completion rates, both around 40%, with both having clear sales pillars supporting them.

Geely's new energy penetration rate broke through 60%, running volume on dual lines of plug-in hybrids and pure electric. In the second half, its domestic market will continue to harvest 100,000 to 200,000 yuan mainstream new energy share through models like Starship E5 and Starship 7, and plans to enter the mid-to-high-end track through new products like Starship TT. Overseas will leverage affordable vehicles of the Starship series to land in Europe for volume boosting, and target overseas high-end premium markets with models like Zeekr 9X, thereby hedging against domestic involution.

Chery's overseas exports shoulder nearly 70% of sales, with channel bonuses in markets like Latin America, Middle East, Russia still being released. In the second half, Chery puts its focus on Europe and emerging markets. Through the new brand LEPAS, hybrid flagship layout in Europe, and model launches like Exeed ET8 in Russia and Central Asia, it uses a strategy of blossoming in multiple points to maintain lightweight growth throughout the year.

In contrast, Changan and Great Wall are the two with low completion rates. Changan's annual target is 3.3 million vehicles, completed 36% in the first half. In the second half, the ramp-up speed of new models like Deepal L05, Qiyuan Q06, Avatr 07 L, etc., will directly affect Changan's sales.

Great Wall's completion rate is also around 30%. Its Tank series stabilized the basic platform of hardcore off-road through plug-in hybrids, but the real volume-driving Haval brand lacks an absolute blockbuster in the new energy mass market. In the second half, whether new models like Tank 300, Haval H10 can tear open a breakthrough in the mainstream new energy market is the variable for Great Wall to reverse the situation.

SAIC also faces considerable pressure to achieve an annual target of 5 million vehicles. Its core highlights for the second half lie in whether the incremental release of new energy models like IM Motors and STELATO Z7 can be released, and whether the decline amplitude of the joint venture basic platform can be narrowed.

In the new forces camp, second half pressure also shifted to rapid volume increase of new product sequences. Leapmotor's annual target is 1.05 million vehicles, completing 30% in the first half. To achieve the target in the second half, monthly average sales need to be pulled to above 110,000. Besides the C-Series holding the basic platform under 200,000 yuan, the high-end D-Series and Lafa5 Series will become the main attackers for volume boosting.

NIO anchors its annual growth target around 40% (about 450,000 vehicles), betting most of the increment on Onvo. In the second half, as flagship models L90, L80, and new L60, etc., welcome the product explosion cycle, Onvo's market performance will directly affect NIO's final results for the year.

XPeng and Harmony Intelligent completion rates are also around 30%. XPeng will quickly increase volume in the second half relying on the global launch of new series like MONA L03, GX. Harmony Intelligent needs to rely on new products like STELATO G9, Qijing GT7, etc., to pull deliveries.

The direction of foreign joint venture brands lacks suspense. Under the pinch attack of continuously shrinking fuel base and new energy products far from forming scale, the main task for joint venture brands in the second half can only be to try to slow down the decline speed. Gasgoo Auto Research Institute forecasts that Volkswagen China is expected to reach around 2 million vehicles for the year, and Toyota in China around 1.3 million.

Of course, sales targets are only surface rulers. In January-May this year, China's automotive industry profit margin has dropped to 3.4%. In the second half, if continuing to rely solely on price cuts to boost volume, it will only further overdraft the blood-making ability of enterprises to survive in the deep water zone. At this stage, blindly stacking delivery numbers has lost practical significance.

The real deciding factor is to see whether each automaker can solidly convert the product cycles planned in hand into quality and cash flow-supported scale explosions.