Actively "Discarding" 70,000 Sales Volume, Tan Benhong: Changan Will Never Be an Assembly Plant

In the first half of 2026, it's not just automotive stocks that kept falling. Data from the China Passenger Car Association shows that cumulative retail sales of passenger cars declined over 20% year-on-year, and industry profit margins have dropped to a historic low of 3.4%. The new energy vehicle penetration rate surged from 39% at the beginning of the year to 63% in June. Every number needs digesting, but there isn't much time left for participants.

Against this background, Changan Automobile released its semi-annual report: overseas sales reached 454,700 units, a 51.87% year-on-year increase; but net profit attributable to shareholders is expected to decline by 57% to 67% year-on-year. 7 July 16, Tan Benhong, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and Director of China Changan Automobile Group, used an analogy that ran through the whole session to respond to all doubts at the mid-year media communication meeting.

"The strategy for pacing in the first 5 kilometers versus the last 5 kilometers must be completely different. At this stage, Changan is in a critical cycle of the second phase, gathering strength and adjusting structure." In his words, Changan is in a critical period of fighting a marathon.

Cutting 70,000 Units of Sales, What is Changan Swapping For?

When an automaker with 3 million annual sales chooses to actively discontinue a product with about 200,000 annual sales, what is it thinking?

In the first half of 2026, Changan decisively cut off the micro EV Lumin priced below 50,000 yuan. This single decision directly resulted in a sales gap of about 70,000 units. But this was not all.

In the "1445" global strategy released in April, Changan streamlined its product line from 63 models down to 36 models, a compression of 43%, while clearly aiming to build "one global blockbuster with annual sales of 500,000 units, and five with 300,000 units annually."

This courage to do subtraction is rare in the current Chinese automotive market. Many brands practice crazy product line expansion, stacking sales volume with SKU quantity, while Changan chose to operate in the opposite direction.A noteworthy detail is that, excluding the reduction impact of Lumin, Changan's new energy vehicle sales actually grew by 11.2% year-on-year in the first half of the year.

Changan Qiyuan's new Q05 cumulative deliveries broke 80,000 units in the first half of the year, with 21,137 vehicles delivered in June alone, winning the compact pure electric SUV sales champion for 3 consecutive months; Deepal S05 global cumulative sales broke 240,000 units, up 78.86% year-on-year. These numbers indicate that Changan's new energy business is actively choosing "what to sell".

In addition, Changan has established an internal "operational co-investment" mechanism. If a product does not make money, even if it sells enough volume, the people who invested in the project must bear the loss.

In the frenzied expansion of China's automotive industry over the past three years, "raising more children for better fighting" was almost the consensus among all players.

Now Changan is the first to call a halt, which is not only due to the SOE gene of "quality first, stability first", but also a clear judgment on the competition logic of the second half of the industry.When the industry profit margin has been compressed to the limit of 3.4%, the game of exchanging losses for scale will eventually see someone exit first. Tan Benhong obviously does not want that person to be Changan.

Start the "Second Half", Changan Digs Deep into Three Moats

If "doing subtraction" is Changan's move on the defensive end, then on the offensive end, Changan's three moats are also very clear: technical self-research, globalization, and refined operations, none of which can be missing.

Among them, the most unexpected is Changan's firm attitude towards autonomous driving self-research. There are plenty of mature autonomous driving supplier solutions available on the market. External procurement and integration is the lowest cost and fastest path, but Tan Benhong gave a judgment that left almost no room: "If automakers abandon autonomous driving self-research and rely solely on external supply, essentially they are just retaining assembly factories with car shells, without core technology barriers."

Currently, Changan's intelligent R&D team has exceeded 7,500 people, with cumulative investment exceeding 10 billion yuan in the past five years. Its self-developed "Tian Shu Pilot" system was officially unveiled at the Chongqing Auto Show in June and will be mass-produced on Changan Qiyuan Q06 in September.

Tan Benhong calls himself a "heavy autonomous driving user". When driving Avatr daily, autonomous driving is enabled in 90% of scenarios. His core positioning for his own products is safety rather than aggression: "Not following the aggressive involution route, focusing core energy on raising the safety ceiling and polishing the user experience."

This choice may not bring too much value at the market level in the short term, but Tan Benhong's ambition clearly extends beyond automobiles himself. He revealed that Changan is extending AI capabilities to more intelligent terminal fields such as intelligent robots: "In the next one to two years, everyone will see Changan's new products and landed experiences in the fields of artificial intelligence and intelligent robots."

Globalization is then the most eye-catching growth pole of Changan at present.In the first half of the year, overseas sales accounted for about 33.6% of total deliveries, equivalent to one out of every three cars sold went overseas. Four deputy general managers of the group are leading overseas business lines at the same time, and the Thailand base has achieved large-scale production.

Tan Benhong made it clear: "In the future, achieving a 50/50 ratio of domestic and overseas market sales." For Changan, it has already achieved full-chain overseas expansion covering product planning, regulation adaptation, supply chain procurement, and local operations.

When the domestic market falls into a zero-sum game, the incremental space overseas is almost an "oxygen tank" for every Chinese automaker, and Changan is clearly already ahead.

As for the strategic integration of Avatr and Deepal, Tan Benhong gave a framework of "Three Unchanged, Three Shared": the front-end brand and channel remain independent, while mid-to-back-end technology, supply chain, and ecosystem resources are fully shared. The synergy in platform architecture and supply chain procurement between the two is expected to bring a cost reduction effect of 20% to 30%.

This multi-brand operation model of "front-end in full bloom, back-end intensive and efficient" is also an embodiment of the scale management capability unique to Changan as a large group. In the future, what Changan needs to do is further bring it to the extreme.

Written at the end:

At this media communication meeting, Tan Benhong said a sentence worth thinking about: "In favorable industry conditions, enterprises still harbor hidden risks; it is easier to see their own shortcomings during industry stress periods."

This sentence can almost be considered the footnote to all of Changan's current strategic actions. Cutting products, adjusting structure, investing long-term, controlling rhythm, these decisions are hard to "prove correct" in a semi-annual report, and may even be interpreted as "stalled speed".

But if the perspective is extended to three or even five years, an enterprise choosing not to follow the herd when the industry is at its craziest, choosing not to lie flat when profits are under pressure, and choosing to adjust pacing when everyone is sprinting, this strategic stability can be seen as a scarce capability.

Of course, all strategic narratives must eventually accept the test of market results.In the second half of the year, mass production of the Tian Shu Pilot autonomous driving system, centralized launch of multiple new products, and continuous increase in overseas business volume, whether these can be converted into real market data is the key evidence for whether Changan's "marathon pacing theory" can hold water.

Tan Benhong also admitted himself: "All strategic adjustments and resource tilt will eventually fall to business performance and market results, this is the assessment goal we always do not change."

Although marathons are never won by sprinting, the audience's patience is always limited. Changan needs to prove in the following race that it not only runs steadily but also runs far.