Behind 30 Million: A Self-Revolution from Headquarters to the Workshop

On July 16, Panyu, Guangzhou. Inside the GAC Trumpchi factory, a right-hand drive Trumpchi M8 PHEV slowly rolled off the production line. There were no complex red carpet ceremonies, nor noisy marketing hype, but its appearance brought a certain weight to the atmosphere of the entire scene.

This is the 30 millionth vehicle to roll off the line of GAC Group.

When GAC Group Chairman Feng Xingya handed the key to Thai owner Tony Jaa, the frozen frame in the lens captured not only the warm moment between GAC staff and users. In 2026, when the industry price war was shrouded in smoke and fire, and involution upgraded from 'competing on price' to 'competing on bosses', GAC used a 29-year figure to present a slightly different version of the story.

30 Million, Not Just a Number

From its establishment in 1997 to date, GAC took 29 years to reach this milestone. Among them, the growth from 10 million vehicles to 30 million vehicles took only 9 years.

29 years, 30 million vehicles—this means an average of nearly 3,000 users chose GAC products every day. In the highly competitive automotive market, the weight of this figure is particularly heavy.

But GAC did not turn this event into a boring marathon of leader speeches. Instead, there was a hardcore romance of the tech stream on site. GAC connected multiple global production bases simultaneously: GAC Honda P7, GAC Toyota BZ7, Enjoi GT7, GAC Aion N60, and GAC Hyper S600 rolled off the production line in sequence, completing delivery as the 29,999,995th to 29,999,999th vehicles. The collective appearance of the full line of new energy vehicles became a direct evidence of GAC's rapid promotion of electrification and intelligence transformation.

Choosing the right-hand drive M8 PHEV as the 30 millionth vehicle model was a strong signal in itself—GAC's ambition has long gone beyond the domestic market.

"Panyu Action": Moving the Office to Where the Fire is Closest

The achievement of 30 million vehicles was not a smooth road. There was difficult exploration during the joint venture era, painful breakthroughs of independent innovation, and during the past two years, choices and reconstruction with a blade turned inward in the "Panyu Action" reform.

In November 2024, GAC Group moved its headquarters from the prosperous Zhujiang New Town in Guangzhou to the Panyu Automotive City tens of kilometers away. At that time, the automotive industry was standing at a historic junction of four overlapping periods: "industry deep transformation, rapid technology iteration, management process reconstruction, and competitive landscape adjustment". GAC chose to shift the management mode of independent brands from strategic control to operational control, breaking apart, crushing, and reshaping the organizational structure into a more agile form.

Feng Xingya compared this reform to "building a house in three years". Trumpchi BU, Aion Hyper BU, and Powertrain BU three business units were established and operated independently in turn, establishing a new mechanism for integrated synergy of R&D, manufacturing, and sales. "We moved the office to the place closest to the gunfire, so that those who hear the sound of artillery call for it."

This institutional reform of "returning to the front line" gave front-line teams more autonomy, greatly shortening the decision chain. At the same time, GAC fully introduced DSTE, IPD, and IPMS systems to reconstruct business processes—the starting point of car making is no longer engineers drawing blueprints, but deeply understanding and quickly responding to users' real needs.

These invisible transformations eventually turned into concrete warmth on the market side. In the first half of 2026, GAC independent brand sales reached 346,000 units, growing 35.69% year-on-year, shouldering the banner of growth with a growth rate exceeding 35%; independent brand export volume reached 121,500 units, a huge increase of 132% year-on-year, almost catching up to the full-year level of last year.

Quality, the Bottom Line Never to Be Compromised

"Quality is the bottom line GAC will never compromise on," Feng Xingya said in the keynote share.

This sentence indeed has persuasiveness coming from GAC's mouth. Under the wave of "cost reduction and efficiency enhancement" in the industry, many car companies did subtraction in invisible places to compress costs, but GAC still did addition on quality verification. Before every new car launches, GAC requires it to undergo field road tests of "two winters and one summer", from Turpan 60°C high temperature to Hulunbuir -40°C extreme cold, from high humidity, high salt spray to mountainous areas, sand and dust, "Five Highs, One Mountain, One Dust" comprehensive environment assessment covered various extreme scenarios users might encounter.

This kind of "stubborn hard work" is also reflected in data: the Cassette Battery cumulative installation reached 1.5 million vehicles, safe driving mileage over 160 billion kilometers; the Star Spirit Safety Guardian System has served nearly 2 million users, cumulatively preventing 6.28 million potential accidents. GAC also led the industry in launching the independent brand "Three Responsibilities" policy, actively backstopping battery and intelligent driving assistance issues.

In Feng Xingya's view, 30 million vehicles means a huge "problem database"—"The mistakes you made, the pitfalls you stepped into, all became data. New Forces may only have samples of ten thousand problems, GAC has million-level data, covering million-level scenarios." Product development lies not only in innovation, but also in comprehensive verification of past problems.

GAC's 30 million vehicles was not completed relying on a single brand or single product, but was the result of walking on two legs with Joint Ventures (Toyota, Honda) and Independents (Trumpchi, Aion, Enjoi). This "Independent + Joint Venture" dual-wheel drive model proved to be sustainable in GAC's practice.

Now, GAC international business already covers 110 countries and regions globally. Facing the next stage, GAC will continue to advance the three-year "Panyu Action", promoting organizational and product development models to shift from engineer thinking to user thinking. According to the plan, by 2030, GAC plans to enter 120 countries and regions globally, build more than 2,000 overseas outlets, and achieve an annual overseas sales volume of 1 million vehicles.

In today's era where many shout "long-termism" while doing short-term gaming, these 30 million of GAC may be the most practical annotation for these four words.