Orders flow to low prices and overseas.

Fixed focus One (dingjiaoone) original

Author | Jin Yufan

Editor | Wei Jia

On November 1, new power car companies successively handed over their October report cards.

Leapmotor maintained its first place with 106,127 vehicles, reaching 100,000 vehicles for the fourth consecutive month. Xiaopeng delivered 50,237 vehicles, exceeding 50,000 vehicles for the first time; Xiaomi delivered more than 50,000 vehicles, returning to this level for the first time this year. NIO (delivered 34,246 vehicles), Hongmeng Zhixing (delivered 33,537 vehicles) and Ideal (delivered 29,025 vehicles) all experienced year-on-year and month-on-month declines.

Among the six companies that were still competing in the same echelon last year, the first place this month is already 3.7 times that of the last place.

The general background of differentiation is a “Silver Ten” with no peak season. The China Passenger Car Association estimates that in October, national passenger vehicle terminal retail sales will decline by approximately 28% year-on-year, with new energy retail sales reaching approximately 1.07 million units, with a penetration rate of approximately 66.9%. The penetration rate is still rising, but the total volume is declining, which means that every additional new energy vehicle sold is mostly converted from fuel vehicles or other brands. After conversion, except for the top two among the six families, the remaining four families can get smaller plates than last year.

Traditional car companies are still expanding their advantages. BYD sold 483,125 passenger cars in October, a new high for the year; Geely sold 214,996 new energy vehicles, including 153,385 of the Galaxy series; Great Wall New Energy sold 49,499 vehicles, nearly 50,000.

At the brand level, Changan Qiyuan reached 63,648 units; those with more than 40,000 units include BYD’s Fangbao (43,872 units) and GAC Haopin Aian BU (42,357 units); Deep Blue (326 units) 02 units) and Ji Krypton (32,483 units) are in the 30,000 unit level; Denza (15,152 units) and Lantu (13,030 units) are in the 10,000 unit level; Zhiji Automobile has 7,837 units, down about 40% year-on-year.

For the six new forces, what is really worthy of interpretation this month is what each company relies on for its current growth and what are the reasons for its decline. Below we break it down one by one based on delivery volume.

01. Zero run to defend 100,000, Xiaopeng broke 50,000

In October, both Leipao and Xiaopeng set new delivery records.But the models and markets supporting growth are different.。

Leapmotor delivered 106,127 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 51%, reaching 100,000 vehicles for the fourth consecutive month.

An investor who pays attention to new forces attributes its growth to three factors: product year, price decline, and channel expansion. Among them, low-priced models already occupy a considerable proportion.

Data released by Leapao shows that sales of the A series in October were close to 40,000 units. This is equivalent to nearly 40% of the total delivery volume that month, and the proportion continues to increase compared with September. The average retail price of the A10 is 76,000 yuan, and the top version comes with lidar and urban NOA at 86,800 yuan. In the past, Leappa mainly competed in the 100,000 to 200,000 yuan market. Now, models under 100,000 yuan have also become the main sales force.

Picture source/Leapao official website

This is possible because Lingpao maximizes cost efficiency and then exchanges price for volume. Therefore, attention needs to be paid to earnings quality. In the first half of this year, zero-run delivery volume increased by 60.8% year-on-year, net profit attributable to the parent company was 210 million yuan, and comprehensive gross profit margin dropped from 14.1% in the same period last year to 11.7%. The reasons given by the company were rising raw material costs and changes in the vehicle product mix. At the August performance meeting, management also lowered its full-year net profit forecast from about 5 billion yuan at the beginning of the year to about 3 billion yuan.

Overseas business also depends on how profits are divided. Leopao uses Stellantis’ channels to go overseas and adopts a cost-based pricing mechanism when supplying vehicles to the joint ventures of both parties. The joint venture is controlled by Stellantis, with Leopao holding 49% of the shares. According to this arrangement,The increase in overseas sales does not mean that the profit margin of Lingpao will also increase simultaneously.

Leapmotor delivered a total of approximately 773,000 vehicles in the first 10 months, which is 227,000 vehicles short of the full-year target of 1 million vehicles. In the last two months, it delivered an average of approximately 114,000 vehicles per month, approximately 7,000 vehicles higher than October. Next, we need to see how much increment A10s’ ramp-up and Double 11 benefits can bring. There is still a chance for Zero Run to achieve its goal, but while continuing to expand sales, how to increase profits is an unavoidable problem.

Xiaopeng’s 50,000 vehicles need to be broken down into domestic and overseas models.

In October, Xpeng delivered 50,237 vehicles, a month-on-month increase of approximately 22% and a year-on-year increase of approximately 20%, exceeding 50,000 vehicles for the first time. Among them, 13,326 vehicles were delivered overseas, a year-on-year increase of 166%, accounting for 26.5% of the total delivery volume.

According to official data, Xpeng’s overseas deliveries in that month increased by approximately 8,300 vehicles year-on-year, exceeding the company’s overall increase of 8,224 vehicles.In other words, Xpeng’s year-on-year growth this month was mainly brought by overseas, and domestic delivery was basically flat.

The significance of going overseas for Xpeng is also to improve profits. Management stated at the performance meeting in May this year that the profitability of international business is higher than that of domestic business. In other words, an increase in the proportion of overseas deliveries is theoretically expected to improve the profits of car sales.

Returning to the domestic market, Xpeng delivered approximately 36,900 vehicles in October, which was basically the same as the same period last year. Looking at the whole year, Xpeng delivered approximately 334,600 vehicles globally in the first 10 months, still down 5.8% year-on-year.

MONA L03 has delivered more than 10,000 units in September, and the company previously stated that production capacity is still climbing; MONA L05, which was launched at the end of October, has a limited-time starting price of 139,800 yuan and will begin delivery in November. Xpeng is still using MONA to win more users. What needs to be proven next is whether these new cars can continue to restore growth in domestic deliveries.

02. Xiaomi reaches 50,000, while Weilai is held back by Letao

Xiaomi and NIO are only one place apart on the list, but their trends are opposite.

Xiaomi delivered “more than 50,000 units” in October, reaching this level for the first time this year. In December last year, it delivered more than 50,000 vehicles per month, but from April to August this year, the announced delivery volume had been “more than 30,000 vehicles”, and it was not until September that it reached 40,000 vehicles.

This round picked up and caught up with the Pengcheng series to start delivery. Pengcheng started deliveries on September 12, and delivered more than 10,000 vehicles that month; by October 7, the cumulative number of locked orders in the 30 days since its launch exceeded 70,000. October is the first full delivery month for this new series.

With Pengcheng, Xiaomi can win over more users. Previously, SU7 and YU7 were both pure electric models, and Pengcheng has added a range extension route. The N70 and N90 cover five-seat and seven-seat SUVs respectively, with starting prices of 209,900 yuan and 269,900 yuan.

Picture source / Xiaomi Auto official website

However, the range extension market that Xiaomi has entered has shrunk in the first half of this year. According to data from the China Passenger Car Association, the wholesale sales of extended-range passenger vehicle manufacturers fell 13.1% year-on-year in the first half of the year, making it the only category among the three new energy routes to see a decline in wholesale volume.Pengcheng has achieved good first-sales results, but after these orders are delivered one after another, we still need to continue to pay attention to how many new orders can be added every month.

Xiaomi is also relying on increased equity to promote the transaction of two pure electric vehicles. On October 8, Xiaomi launched a three-year 0 interest or 6,000 yuan insurance subsidy for a small number of existing SU7 and YU7 cars, and emphasized that the fastest time to pick up the car is 2 hours. For users who are still waiting to see, Xiaomi has set a lower threshold for car purchase and shortened the waiting time.

NIO also hopes to cover different users with more products, but the trends of the three brands have widened the gap.

In October, NIO delivered 34,246 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 15.2% and a month-on-month decrease of 8.5%. Cumulative deliveries in the first 10 months still increased by 38.5% year-on-year, but the three brands no longer grew simultaneously.

Among them, NIO’s main brand delivered 18,125 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 5.7%; Firefly delivered 7,738 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 30.9%; Ledo delivered 8,383 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 51.7%. The company as a whole delivered 6,151 fewer vehicles year-on-year, and the Ledo brand alone saw a decrease of 8,959 vehicles.

Compared with September, the main brand also delivered about 3,200 fewer vehicles, a month-on-month decrease of about 15%. Firefly is the only one of the three brands that has experienced month-on-month growth, but its increased delivery volume is not enough to make up for the gap of the other two brands. That is to say,The year-on-year decline was mainly due to Letao, while the decline in the past month was more due to the main brand.

Letao’s decline has been going on for months. In May this year, the L80 was launched and began delivery. The brand delivered more than 12,000 units that month. Since then, Ledo’s delivery volume has declined month-on-month for five consecutive months, falling to 8,383 vehicles in October. After adding a new car, the brand’s overall sales still failed to continue to rise.

The competition faced by Letao is too fierce. In addition to other pure electric SUVs, new range-extended vehicles like Pengcheng are also entering this market. Li Bin discussed Ledao’s difficulties at the performance meeting in September: brand awareness is not enough. In his judgment, after consumers understand the product, the conversion performance is not weak. What is difficult is to get more people to know Ledao first.

To this end, NIO plans to increase offline activities and cross-border cooperation, accelerate the layout of stores shared by three brands, and expand to more third- and fourth-tier cities. The management also emphasized that to maintain price stability for the three brands, Ledo must also take into account both sales volume and gross profit. Next, it is worth paying attention to how many orders these promotion and channel investments can bring.

Li Bin previously proposed to achieve an average monthly delivery of more than 40,000 vehicles in the fourth quarter. Calculated based on October’s results, the average monthly delivery in the last two months is about 43,000 vehicles, which means that each month will be nearly 9,000 more vehicles than October’s level. After the continuous decline of Letao and the month-on-month decline of the main brand, this goal has higher requirements for the two months at the end of the year.

03. Hongmeng Zhixing is cut in half, and Ideal is at the bottom

In the first half of this year, sales of new energy passenger vehicles with more than 400,000 units increased by 45.9%, the only rapid growth among all price bands. The average transaction price of Hongmeng Zhixing’s entire series exceeds 400,000, and the ideal main model is also around 300,000. As a result, in October, Hongmeng Zhixing delivered 33,537 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 50.8%, a drop far exceeding the 13% level of the new energy market retail sales. This was the fourth consecutive month of month-on-month decline; Ideal delivered 29,025 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 8.6%. Although the decline was smaller than the market, it was the only one among the six to fall below 30,000 units. Its year-on-year and month-on-month double declines have continued for two months.Both families have to find the reasons for their problems within themselves.

Let’s look at Hongmeng Zhixing first. It is the only one in the top camp that has been cut in half.Among them, Thalys’ production and sales report shows that Wenjie sold 22,105 vehicles in October, a year-on-year decrease of 54.7%, accounting for about two-thirds of Hongmeng Zhixing’s total sales. Chery officially disclosed that Zhijie sold 6,090 vehicles in October, a year-on-year decrease of 52.5%.

Thalys production and sales report for October 2026

One of the triggers for Hongmeng’s decline is that Wenjie is undergoing a transition of dominance. On September 15, Hongmeng Zhixing and Wenjie announced at the same time that Wenjie’s product definition, design, brand marketing, channel retail and service system will be led by Cyrus, and Huawei terminals will retreat to the position of participating in empowerment. However, the official switch of dominance will not occur until January 1, 2027. It is still in the transition period, and the impact has already been transmitted to the stores. A channel source who pays attention to new forces said that some Huawei Life Stores are still selling normally, some are still waiting for authorization arrangements, and some models cannot even be placed in small orders.

Another trigger is the product replacement period. The delivery of several new cars intensively released in September was all scheduled at the end of the month or later. The Zhijie RX started delivery on October 25, and the refreshed Zhijie R7 was delivered to the first batch of owners on October 27, making almost no contribution to the month. One and a half months passed between the pre-sale of the new M8 on September 30 and its launch on November 13. The starting price was still 20,000 yuan higher than the old model. Some stores reported that orders were lower than expected. In October, only two cars, the M9 and M6, actually took over the market, accounting for more than 80% of the brand’s share. The old M8 and M7 have entered the later stages of the product cycle, while the Zhijie V9’s monthly sales fell from more than 10,000 in July to 3,542 units in September. The higher the product concentration, the greater the impact of the replacement period.

In October, the total number of vehicles in the four circles outside Wenjie was about 11,000, which was nearly 4,000 less than in September. Leaving aside the Zhijie, the Xiangjie, Zunjie, and Shangjie combined only have over 5,000 vehicles.

Chery Automobile’s production and sales report for October 2026

The quality turmoil at Zunjie also affected deliveries that month. On October 8, the brake pedal bracket of the Zunjie V800 broke during a third-party braking test. Three test vehicles from different batches all broke. Among them, the pedal force reading of the third vehicle at the moment of breakage was 1,612 N, which was lower than the national standard of 2,000 N. Zunjie said that the test was a “non-standard extreme test condition” and that the development and verification standards of its products are higher than national and industry standards. Zunjie promised to upgrade relevant parts for free for users that had been delivered that night. A week later, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Central Cyberspace Administration of China, and the State Administration for Market Regulation announced the establishment of a joint investigation team.

Zunjie only delivered more than 2,000 vehicles in September. Looking at the volume alone, the impact will be limited. Sources in the above-mentioned channels said that buyers paid a premium for “Huawei Empowerment”, and the problem was with the mechanical components. Improper handling may affect consumers’ recognition of Hongmeng Smart’s premium logic. UBS also reminded in the report that the incident has associated reputational risks for the entire Hongmeng Zhixing ecological brand. In the second week of October, Hongmeng Smart’s weekly orders fell 13% month-on-month.

Next let’s look at the new M8. This is the first new car after Cyrus took the lead in trading. Whether the channel is straightened out and whether the market recognizes the price increase of 20,000 yuan will be reflected in the delivery.At the same time, Hongmeng Zhixing must also stop the downward trend.

The direct reason why the ideal fell below 30,000 units is that the sales pillar i6 is being replaced.

The i6 is Ideal’s most popular car this year. In the first half of the year, it delivered more than 120,000 vehicles, accounting for more than 60% of the brand’s total sales. From March to May, monthly sales exceeded 20,000 for three consecutive months. On September 11, Lili’s official website and app stopped accepting orders for the old model i6, leaving only a small number of existing cars in stores. The new model will be launched on October 28, with deliveries starting on the 29th. For a car that accounts for 60% of sales, orders were stopped for a month and a half, and the total volume in October was naturally affected.

Other cars cannot fill this gap. The pure electric SUV i9, which was launched in September, only had its first complete delivery month in October; more than 3,000 units of the new generation MEGA were delivered that month. It is also difficult to count on the extended range. In the first half of the year, the retail sales of extended range dropped by 19.4% year-on-year. The Xiaomi Pengcheng N70 is facing the L6, and the N90 is facing the L8 and L9, which is the ideal main price range. The ideal target for the new L6 after the replacement is to sell 10,000 units per month. When the previous generation L6 was selling at its best, it could sell 25,000 units per month.

In addition to sales volume, there is also pressure to achieve ideal profits.Ideal lost 3.98 billion yuan in the first half of this year, and its gross profit margin fell to 9.4%. The management promised that the gross profit margin would return to above 15% in the fourth quarter, but the i6, which has a low gross profit, started to increase sales in November.

Therefore, in the past two months at the end of the year, all Ideal series are betting on the new i6. For this model change, Ideal got the self-developed Lianshan battery and Mach M100 chip on the car. The guide price is 249,800 yuan, and the first-sale limited-time rights price is 239,800 yuan. There is no increase in price for additional quantities. The company said that orders for new models within 72 hours of their launch significantly exceeded the same period last year, but did not release specific figures. On October 30, Li Xianyang, head of Li Auto’s product line, said that i6 production capacity will reach 20,000 units in November and will continue to increase in December.

Looking at the whole year, only about 66% of the target of 487,600 vehicles was achieved. People in the above channels speculated that the ideal full-year sales volume is likely to be between 385,000 and 395,000 vehicles. After i6 production capacity increases in November, delivery will most likely increase. The above-mentioned investors said that what the market is really paying attention to is whether the basic market of ideal range extension is stable under the continuous decline of the range extension market and squeeze from competitors; whether the pure electric line can continue to increase in volume next year. These two answers determine the ideal start to 2027.

04.Conclusion

Judging from the October report card, orders are concentrating in two directions.

One direction is low prices. Nearly 40% of Leapau’s sales come from the A series with a price tag of less than 100,000 yuan, and nearly 60% of Xpeng’s sales come from MONA. Both companies are trading in cheaper cars for scale.

The other direction is overseas. 26.5% of Xpeng’s deliveries come from overseas. In the first nine months of the year, Leapmotor exported more than 150,000 vehicles. BYD and Geely’s overseas sales are also increasing.

However, the progress of each company’s overseas expansion varies greatly. Leapmotor is already produced locally in Europe. Xpeng’s overseas gross profit margin is significantly higher than domestically. Ideal has just over 20 overseas stores. NIO has only registered one vehicle in Germany a month. Finding channels, tying sales, and localization all require time and money. Overseas countries will not be able to fill the domestic gap in the short term. This applies to all companies that want to find growth through exports, but some have just started and some have been running for two or three years.

The domestic market is becoming more and more crowded, and going overseas is slow to achieve results. To break the situation, we have to return to the business itself. After the scale increases, will each car make money? After the product line is rolled out, will several brands divert from each other?

There are only two months left in 2026, and the year-end examination papers of the six companies can be summarized into three categories: Zero-running sales have surged, and it depends on whether profits can keep up; Xpeng and Xiaomi, which are catching up, depend on whether the popularity of orders brought by new cars can be sustained; and NIO, Hongmeng Zhixing and Ideal, which are declining, depend on whether they can seize the last time to reverse the downward trend.

*The title picture comes from Unsplash.

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