The Truth Behind the Automotive Industry's "Blood Transfusion": 160 Executives Leave, 1200 AI Talents Arrive

Author: Shi Ke

Every few years, the automotive industry is declared to be "entering an elimination race". In 2018, they said elimination was coming, in 2020 they said winter was here, in 2022 they said reshuffling started, in 2024 they said they couldn't compete anymore, by 2026, after swapping a batch of executives, someone says again: this time it really enters an elimination race.

Why hasn't this industry been eliminated completely?

Seeing titles like "160+ executive changes" and "densest personnel shake-up in ten years", the first reaction isn't nervousness, it's fatigue. The data is piled up neatly, the conclusions are drawn decisively, reading it feels like an industry report with exclamation marks added. But is the market really that terrible?

Not necessarily.

Change perspective: What if this isn't the apocalypse?

From 2015 to 2018, China's mobile internet also went through a round of "the densest in history" management iteration. BAT collectively "had a blood transfusion", O2O companies were found dead everywhere, shared bicycles lay colorfully on the streets. Back then, the voices depreciating the mobile internet were much louder than the voices depreciating cars now.

So what was the result?

ByteDance "grew" TikTok within that "winter". Pinduoduo found trillion-yuan level opportunities in the downward-tiered markets that no one looked down upon. Meituan climbed out of the sea of blood from the "Thousand Group War" and became a giant in local life. The internet didn't die; instead, it moved from inception to maturity.

The Automotive Industry is Walking the Same Path Now

Over the past 5 years, new energy penetration rate went from 5% to over 60%. That was a wild era, whoever was bold enough could take off. But now penetration passed 60%, the game rules changed. From "whether there is one" to "whether it is good", from "grabbing territory" to "competing in internal power". The people needed now are no longer bold heroes, but professional managers who understand systems, AI, and the global market.

A bunch of companies simultaneously changing executives looks like something is wrong with the industry. Actually, the industry changed, and companies are desperately trying to make themselves match the new battlefield.

This isn't an elimination race. It's just that the rite of passage comes with a bit of pain.

People crying about domestic sales are calculating a confused account - retail sales of passenger cars dropped by nearly 20% in the first 5 months, profit margin was 3.2%, a historical low. The numbers are real, but if you shout "apocalypse" looking only at these numbers, your vision is too narrow.

In 2023, China exported 4.91 million cars, surpassing Japan for the first time to become number one globally. In 2024 it rose to 5.8 million. BYD built factories in Thailand, Brazil, Hungary; Chery went to Spain to acquire factories; SAIC, Great Wall, Geely expanded capacity to all continents globally. Domestic dropped by 20%, overseas rose by nearly 50%. Using the "domestic retail sales" metric alone to sentence the entire industry to death is like using a thermometer for a full-body checkup. You found a fever, but didn't see the person gaining muscle.

Then there's the saying that "370 million units in possession is the ceiling". People who say this have their minds stuck in the fuel vehicle era.

Back then, a car was driven for ten years, so of course it hit the ceiling. But now cars are becoming AI terminals, smart driving capabilities iterate every six months. When cars change from "durables" to "tech consumer goods", replacement cycles will shorten significantly. Possession volume is not a ceiling; it's a huge pool waiting to be reactivated.

The "Price War" Can No Longer Work? Thank Goodness

"The continuous 3-year 'price war' is invalid, low prices can no longer stimulate consumption." This sentence was cited everywhere as evidence of pessimism, but it is actually the best news of 2026.

The "price war" of 2023-2024 pressed industry profit margins to the historical low of 3.2%. What flooded the market during that time? Products just for the sake of being cheap, configurations shrinking, quality declining, safety hazards frequent. Car companies fell into a dead loop of lowering prices to move volume, shrinking profits, and cutting R&D; consumers also didn't gain any advantage. Only after buying did they realize that the little money saved was all spent on car repairs and regret.

But starting in 2025, the market changed.

BYD's cars above 200,000 yuan sell better and better. Huawei AITO M9 average price over 500,000 yuan, monthly sales stably breaking 10,000 units. Xiaomi SU7 exploded upon launch, relying not on low price but on product definition capability. Li Auto, amidst the pain of pure electric transformation, the L series still dominates the niche market.

These enterprises have one thing in common: they are not the cheapest in their respective tracks, but consumers are willing to pay.

To put it plainly, Chinese consumers have matured. Evolved from "buy whoever is cheap" to "buy whoever is good". The "price war" fizzled out because price sensitivity decreased, and value sensitivity increased. This is a huge benefit for companies with real abilities; the days of "bad money driving out good" have finally ended.

Li Auto Lost 12 People, So What?

"Li Auto had 12 core executives resign in half a year" was portrayed repeatedly as a crisis signal, but few people mentioned another matter: Li Auto simultaneously recruited AI algorithm engineers, smart cockpit experts, and autonomous driving architects on a large scale at a faster speed.

12 left, maybe 120 recruited. What is the direction of talent flow? From traditional automotive positions flowing to AI positions. This is not talent drain, it is strategic "blood transfusion".

NIO's logic is the same. Massively poaching cross-industry talent from Huawei, Apple, DJI. Li Bin doesn't want people who know how to build cars better, he wants to turn NIO from a car-building company into an AI-driven mobility tech company. "Changing commanders" is not to save sales, but to equip new teams for the new strategy.

Changan promoted two post-80s vice presidents. The personnel logic of large state-owned enterprises changed. The era of software-defined cars doesn't need experienced "old masters", it needs new managers who can iterate quickly and dare to make mistakes.

BBA deployed headquarters' overseas executives to directly manage the China region, interpreted as "powers consolidating overseas". This interpretation is really a bit funny. If the Chinese market really wasn't working, what did the European headquarters send the strongest lineup for? Retirement? Quite the opposite. In fields like smart cockpits, high-level smart driving, China's innovation speed has already led Europe by one or two steps. BBA upgraded China from "sales market" to "global innovation base". This is "putting out fires", not centralizing power.

What We Should Really Worry About is Not Who Left, but Who Hasn't Arrived

Personnel changes themselves have never been the root of the problem, they are just the appearance. Changing a CEO cannot save a company with bad products, but a good strategy matched with the right people can allow a mediocre company to be reborn.

The biggest risk in the current automotive industry is not that "changing commanders" is too frequent, but that some companies haven't changed thoroughly enough.

Some car companies are still fighting stock wars with incremental era tactics: fighting on price, stacking configurations, competing on parameters, but uniquely not competing on user experience. Some management teams are still holding ten-year-old meetings, making ten-year-old decisions, looking at today's market with ten-year-old eyes. These are what should truly be eliminated.

The "wave of changing commanders" in 2026 eliminates not the industry, but the tactics of the old era. And those companies that first complete organizational iteration, think through the strategy, and assemble the team will become stronger after this round of adjustments.

Winter for the automotive industry hasn't come. It just took off the "old clothes" of the inception period, ready to step into the next decade.