As subsidy policies are phased out and the price war slows down, why have these cars become such hot sellers?

The new energy vehicle market in China is approaching a new watershed.

The Wenjie M9 has ranked first in sales in the luxury market above 500,000 yuan for 18 consecutive months, with cumulative deliveries exceeding 240,000 units, demonstrating the real appeal of high - level intelligent driving in the high - end market.

The cumulative deliveries of the twin stars S7 and R7 of Zhijie have exceeded 110,000 units. The new Deepal S07 received 20,000 orders just ten days after the start of pre - sales. These all confirm the same fact: Intelligent driving ability is becoming a key variable driving sales.

This trend is spreading from individual popular models to a wider range of brands and market segments.

Since August this year, a number of models originally focused on niche markets have started to break through their boundaries rapidly:

The monthly deliveries of the Chery Fengyun A9L, GAC Toyota bZ3X, and Dongfeng Nissan N7 all exceeded or approached 10,000 units in that month.

In September, the new generation IM LS6 received 10,000 firm orders just 27 minutes after its launch, and the number of pre - orders exceeded 50,000 units. The Audi E5 Sportback received over 10,000 orders within 30 minutes of its launch.

Whether they are domestic, joint - venture, or luxury brands, all are proving with new models that high - level intelligent driving is becoming a new catalyst in this market.

After range, consumers' focus has changed

In the past five years, the main theme of the Chinese automotive industry has been electrification.

The three most common questions consumers ask when buying a car are price, range, and charging.

However, today, this competitive logic is changing.

First, the progress of battery technology has made a range of over 600 kilometers the norm. Players represented by Tesla, NIO, Li Auto, and XPeng have continuously expanded the charging network, and consumers' concerns have shifted from "Is there enough electricity?" to "Is the car smart enough?"

Second, price wars are constantly squeezing profit margins. From 2023 to 2024, Tesla's multiple price cuts of the Model Y showed the industry that relying solely on price and range can no longer build a real moat.

Third, consumers' mindsets are also changing: Intelligent driving experience, especially high - level intelligent driving, is becoming an increasingly core consideration in consumers' car - buying decisions.

In first - tier and new first - tier cities, more and more consumers are starting to pay attention to "Does the car have the urban NOA function?" During test drives, salespeople are more inclined to demonstrate functions such as urban intelligent driving and automatic parking to increase the conversion rate.

Many car owners have reported that "Once you've used the high - level NOA assisted intelligent driving, it's hard to go back to traditional driving." The experience difference brought by intelligent driving is being rapidly magnified in congested urban roads, complex overpasses, and narrow parking lots.

Data also confirms this trend:

A report from consulting firm J.D. Power pointed out that the weight of "intelligent driving functions" in consumers' car - buying decisions increased from 12% in 2020 to 35% in 2023. A car - buying decision insight report released by Yiche Research Institute showed that this figure was close to 40% in 2024.

The latest data from Huawei Kunpeng Intelligent Driving shows that the cumulative assisted driving mileage has exceeded 5 billion kilometers. This means that intelligent driving is completely moving out of the category of "spec sheet gimmicks" and truly becoming a "daily necessity" that users are willing to use frequently.

In other words, in the second half of the competition after electrification, the real watershed is intelligence, especially intelligent driving ability.

The driving force behind the sales dark horses: Intelligent driving is the new "sales engine"

The most intuitive manifestation of this trend comes from Hongmeng Smart Mobility.

According to the latest data: The firm orders of the Xiangjie S9T exceeded 13,000 units in one week after its launch. On September 23, the firm orders of the Shangjie H5 and the new Wenjie M7 exceeded 10,000 and 30,000 units respectively within one hour of their simultaneous launch.

It can be seen that almost every model in Hongmeng Smart Mobility's product matrix can accumulate tens of thousands of orders in a short period, which reflects the strong appeal of intelligent driving ability to users.

This change is not an isolated case.

In a broader market, more and more models are breaking through their original boundaries with high - level intelligent driving ability:

The Chery Fengyun A9L had 10,243 units delivered in August. With the combination of "space + range + intelligent driving", it quickly stood out in the mid - to large - sized plug - in hybrid market.

The Dongfeng Nissan N7 had 10,148 units delivered in August, a month - on - month increase of 57%. It is also the first joint - venture new energy vehicle with monthly deliveries exceeding 10,000 units.

Wang Qian, the general manager of Dongfeng Nissan's new energy brand, wrote on Weibo: "It has ranked second in the mid - to large - sized pure - electric sedan segment for eight consecutive weeks, only behind the Xiaomi SU7." For a joint - venture automaker, the significance of this achievement is self - evident.

The GAC Toyota bZ3X had 7,324 units delivered in August, with a month - on - month increase for four consecutive months. It currently has over 8,800 undelivered orders. It is also the first model in GAC Toyota's new energy product line to achieve "steady growth in sales".

The new generation IM LS6 has been gaining popularity since the pre - sales started in mid - August and until its launch in September. The number of pre - orders exceeded 50,000 units, and the firm orders exceeded 10,000 units within half an hour of its launch. The success of IM Motors in the mid - to high - end pure - electric market is obviously related to the comprehensively upgraded intelligent driving experience.

The new car dynamics in September also confirm this trend:

The pre - orders of the Yangwang U8L Ding Shi Edition exceeded 20,000 units within 72 hours of the start of pre - sales.

When the Buick Electra E5 L had its national premiere, it took the intelligent driving experience as the core selling point. Although the specific number of orders was not announced, more than 60% of the orders came from the conversion of joint - venture fuel - vehicle users, indicating that users are voting with their feet.

At the launch event of the Audi E5 Sportback, the high - level intelligent driving experience was presented as the core highlight, which is also an important reason for it to receive over 10,000 orders within half an hour.

From the popular models of Hongmeng Smart Mobility to the outstanding performances of Chery, Nissan, Toyota, IM, and Audi, it can be seen that intelligent driving ability is replacing "range" as the core selling point in the new energy vehicle market.

Charging is no longer the decisive factor for sales, and intelligent driving is the new engine.

Further observation reveals two industry changes:

First, the focus of new car press conferences has shifted. In the past few years, the focus of new car press conferences was often on "three - electric systems", space design, and intelligent cockpits. Since the second half of 2024, the proportion of intelligent driving ability has increased significantly.

Whether they are domestic or joint - venture automakers, they are spending more time demonstrating high - level intelligent driving ability, making "intelligent driving" a standard part of new model promotion.

Second, behind these popular models, there is often a powerful intelligent driving solution provider.

In August this year, the cumulative installation volume of Huawei Kunpeng Intelligent Driving officially exceeded 1 million units, covering 28 popular models. The ADS 4.0 based on the new WEWA architecture will also be gradually pushed in September.

Another important intelligent driving enabler is Momenta, which currently covers almost all mainstream automakers, including traditional, joint - venture, and international ones: It is involved in over 160 models, and the cumulative mass - production installation volume has exceeded 400,000 units.

Traditional automakers: SAIC (IM), BYD (Denza, Yangwang), GAC (Hyper, Aion), Chery (Fengyun), Hongqi, etc.;

Joint - venture automakers: GAC Toyota, FAW Toyota, Dongfeng Nissan, etc.;

International automakers: Volkswagen, Audi, Mercedes - Benz, General Motors, Honda, BMW, etc.

From a technical perspective, the reason why intelligent driving systems can truly impress consumers is that they solve high - frequency and essential scenarios in daily travel:

For example, they can automatically follow the vehicle in front during peak traffic hours, freeing the driver's feet; accurately judge the gap between oncoming vehicles during unprotected left turns, reducing driving anxiety; and park the car in a narrow parking space in a mall or a residential area with one click, avoiding repeated maneuvering.

Behind these scenarios is the in - depth collaboration of perception algorithms, prediction and decision - making, and control and execution.

Huawei has evolved from the GOD network (General Obstacle Detection) of ADS 2.0 to the "world model" of ADS 4.0, adopting the World Engine + World Behavior Model architecture (WEWA architecture), which gives the system strong generalization ability in dealing with extreme scenarios.

Momenta uses the R6 reinforcement learning large model and the "self - play" mechanism to extract better strategies from 30 billion kilometers of real - world data.

This kind of technology can not only mimic human driving but also optimize strategies autonomously, especially showing better performance than human drivers in extreme scenarios. This is why high - level intelligent driving is becoming a key variable for automakers to differentiate their sales.

If models like the Chery A9L, Dongfeng Nissan N7, and IM LS6 represent the accelerated realization of the intelligent driving dividend, then the market performance of some other models confirms from the opposite side a trend: The gap in intelligent driving ability will be increasingly reflected in sales.

For example, although the sales of the facelifted Tesla Model 3 remain stable, the lack of higher - level and full - scenario intelligent driving ability has reduced its appeal among young consumers in first - and second - tier cities. Some consumers in the same price range are starting to switch to new - energy models of new - force or joint - venture automakers equipped with advanced domestic intelligent driving solutions.

In addition, the sales of some models that rely solely on "long range + low price", such as some Class A pure - electric sedans, did not maintain their momentum in August this year.

Although these products meet the requirements of "electrification", as consumers' focus shifts to "intelligence", the lack of high - level intelligent driving configuration will gradually become a constraint on automakers' sales.

Similar cases indicate that after the new energy vehicle penetration rate reaches 50%, relying solely on electrification is no longer sufficient to drive sales growth. In the second half, the decisive factor is shifting to intelligent driving ability.

Intelligent driving is reshaping the watershed in the new energy vehicle market

Not only in the domestic market, but the influence of intelligent driving ability is also spreading to the international stage.

The Munich Auto Show in early September became a "going - global stage" for the Chinese automotive supply chain. Players in the entire industrial chain, including intelligent driving, intelligent cockpits, batteries, and electric drives, demonstrated the integrity and competitiveness of the Chinese supply chain in Europe.

If on the international stage, the competitive advantage of Chinese cars is shifting from manufacturing scale to technological empowerment, then in the domestic market, automakers are about to face a more brutal sales test during the "Golden September and Silver October" period.

At this critical juncture, the weight of intelligent driving ability will be further increased.

Canalys, a globally renowned market analysis firm, predicts that by 2025, six out of every ten new cars sold in China will have intelligent driving functions above Level L2.

On the one hand, consumers have a more intuitive understanding of the experience difference of intelligent driving functions - whether a car can replace the driver for most operations during rush hours and whether it can "park with one click" in a narrow residential parking space directly determine consumers' purchasing decisions and word - of - mouth dissemination.

On the other hand, automakers' sales will also be more closely linked to intelligent driving ability.

The sales dark horses in August are just a sign. As more models equipped with mature intelligent driving solutions such as those from Huawei and Momenta enter the market, the sales gap between different automotive brands will be further widened in the future.

The year 2025 is known in the industry as the "year of equal access to intelligent driving".

Traditional automakers such as BYD, Geely, and Changan have announced that they will extend intelligent driving functions to more models, even targeting the mass market with prices as low as 70,000 yuan.

BYD has released the "Tian Shen Zhi Yan" system, and Changan has launched the "Beidou Tianshu 2.0" plan, aiming to achieve Level L3 autonomous driving by 2026.

This trend is also confirmed by data. According to statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and multiple institutions:

In the first half of 2024, the penetration rate of L2 - level and above assisted driving in Chinese passenger cars reached 55.7%, and the penetration rate of high - level functions such as NOA was about 11%.

By the first half of 2025, the penetration rate of NOA had approached 19%, and it is expected to exceed 20% for the whole year. Among new energy models priced above 200,000 yuan, the penetration rate of high - level intelligent driving has exceeded 35%, and it is over 50% for leading new - force brands.

These data indicate that consumers' understanding of intelligent driving functions is spreading rapidly, and high - level functions are no longer exclusive to a few high - end models.

From an industry trend perspective, Jin Yuzhi, the CEO of Huawei's Intelligent Automotive