JD.com's "Automobile Manufacturing": What Does Liu Qiangdong Intend to Do?

After initiating the food delivery war, aggressively entering the hotel and travel industry, accelerating the opening of JD Discount Supermarkets, and entering the coffee market, Liu Qiangdong has made another big move, this time targeting the automotive industry.

At the JD 11.11 Surprise Open Day event held on October 14, JD Auto announced a joint effort with Times Electric Service, a subsidiary of CATL, and GAC Group to launch a "national good car". Soon, the topic of "JD making cars" hit the hot search.

Subsequently, JD responded that the new car revealed this time is a joint venture of the three parties. JD mainly provides user consumption insights and exclusive sales, and is not directly involved in the manufacturing process.

It's not hard to see from JD's response that JD didn't rashly enter the "red ocean" of vehicle manufacturing. Instead, it uses a light - asset model and relies on its core advantages to create a new growth curve in the automotive aftermarket and the intelligent mobility ecosystem.

Why make cars?

JD's continuous entry into new tracks and expansion of new businesses is a "breakthrough" need under the pressure of growth.

Looking at JD Group's financial reports in recent years, although its core retail business has maintained revenue growth, the growth rate has significantly slowed down and entered a plateau. At the same time, despite the improvement in net profit, the overall competition in the e - commerce industry has shifted from the incremental market to the stock market.

JD needs to find a "second growth curve" that is large enough and can be combined with its own genes to support its future market value and investor confidence. The automotive industry, as a market with a scale of up to one trillion yuan, naturally becomes the top - choice target.

JD has a stable cash flow and sufficient cash reserves, which provides a solid financial foundation for its strategic investments and new business expansions.

More importantly, JD has hundreds of millions of high - value users, especially JD PLUS members (data shows that the membership scale exceeds 50 million). This group of users usually has the characteristics of high income, high loyalty, and a focus on service quality, which highly coincides with the main customer group of automotive consumption (including purchase, maintenance, and peripheral products). The high unit price and long decision - making cycle of cars are very compatible with the users on the JD platform. Serving the car - related lives of these users is equivalent to activating the most valuable stock assets, and its monetization potential is huge.

After mobile phones, cars can be said to be the largest intelligent terminals. Whoever can meet users' car - using needs can find a super traffic entrance and master the "traffic code" for the next decade.

The real intention is beyond "cars"

On the surface, JD's entry into the car - making business is to drive traffic to JD Auto Maintenance through business synergy. But in the long run, there may be a greater "ambition" of Liu Qiangdong hidden behind it, which is to build a full - cycle value closed - loop of the "car ecosystem" and become an indispensable infrastructure and service provider in the future intelligent automotive era. Its core intentions may include:

• Complete the consumption scenario and tap the user's lifetime value. As the "top - level" product in household consumption, the purchase decision of a car is highly related to home appliances, home furnishings, insurance, etc. JD intends to connect the full - cycle services of "buying a car - car accessories - maintenance - trade - in". This can not only improve the platform stickiness of high - net - worth users (such as exclusive rights for PLUS members to buy cars) but also drive peripheral consumption (car - mounted appliances, charging piles, extended warranty services, etc.). The user trust accumulated in the car - maintenance business can in turn boost the sales of complete vehicles, forming an ecological cycle of "high - frequency services driving low - frequency sales" and making car users become ecological members who continuously contribute value.

• Extend the value boundary of the supply chain and empower the automotive aftermarket: As a company with the supply chain as its core competitiveness, JD will extend the C2M model from the fields of 3C, home furnishings, etc. to the automotive industry. Using its strong supply chain management ability, logistics network, and digital technology, it will integrate the currently highly fragmented automotive maintenance market and become the standard - setter and service - flow aggregator in the industry.

JD Auto Maintenance has built a large - scale network. Currently, JD Auto Maintenance has nearly 3,000 self - operated stores and more than 40,000 cooperative stores. Through standardized training and SOP processes, it has achieved rapid replication of service capabilities, providing practical support for the post - sales maintenance of cars.

• Enter the new - energy vehicle industry chain and seize the dividends of the new - energy track: As of September 2025, the penetration rate of new - energy vehicles in China was about 58.1%, reaching a record high.

By entering this incremental market through a tri - party cooperation, JD not only avoids the heavy - asset risk of building its own factory but also can quickly launch a "national good car" suitable for the sinking market with the manufacturing experience of GAC and the battery - swapping technology of CATL, competing for a share of the trillion - level market. It will cooperate with new - energy vehicle manufacturers to provide an integrated solution for online direct sales, offline delivery, charging pile installation, and after - sales service.

• Layout intelligent mobility and form long - term technological synergy: In May this year, JD registered the trademark "Joyrobotaxi", which is regarded as JD's official entry into the field of autonomous taxis (Robotaxi). It plans to transform the interior space of Robotaxis into a "mobile e - commerce terminal" to achieve a closed - loop of instant retail with "ordering online and picking up goods in the car", thus creating a new consumption scenario.

JD's technological reserves in fields such as AI (intelligent customer service), the Internet of Things (smart home), and big data (user profiling) can be deeply integrated with the in - vehicle system and user - interaction functions of intelligent cars (such as remotely controlling the vehicle through the JD APP and synchronizing the household shopping list to the in - vehicle system), and even pave the way for future autonomous driving logistics scenarios.

JD's entry into the car - making business is essentially a key step in its transformation from a "commodity trading platform" to a "lifestyle service provider". From this, we can also see the core idea of JD Group in the new growth stage: Based on its core capabilities, it expands into high - potential and highly relevant ecological fields, deeply mines and locks in the full - life - cycle value of core users.

The road ahead is destined to be bumpy, but if JD can replicate its advantages in retail, logistics, and user operation in the automotive industry, it is expected to open up a trillion - level automotive consumption market.

This article is from the WeChat official account “DifferentFin” (ID: DifferentFin), author: Yechabai Xue. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.