Lei Jun was absent. Two new protagonists made a joint appearance. "Huawei's presence can be seen everywhere."
Lei Jun Absent, 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show Sees “Newcomers In, Old-timers Out”, Two New Leading Players Make Joint Appearance
“Lei Jun didn't come!” On November 21st, at the Xiaomi Auto booth of the 2025 (23rd) Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition (hereinafter referred to as the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show), a staff member told a reporter from China Fund News.
Different from participating in the Beijing and Guangzhou auto shows in 2024, Lei Jun, the chairman of Xiaomi Group, successively missed the Shanghai and Guangzhou auto shows in 2025.
The Beijing (Shanghai) Auto Show and the Guangzhou Auto Show, as the two major Class A auto shows in China, are important windows to observe the evolution of the automobile market pattern and predict the future trend of the automobile market, and are known as the “barometer of the development of the Chinese automobile market”.
With the absence of Lei Jun and others, the new leading player at the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show is Huawei Qiankun. A person from an automobile enterprise said after touring the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show: “Huawei's presence can be seen everywhere.”
“Newcomers in, old-timers out” is an important feature of the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show, and another new leading player is new energy vehicles. Official data shows that the proportion of new energy vehicles at the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show reached 57.97%, while it was 43.72% at the previous session.
Huawei Qiankun Steps into the Spotlight, Deeply Bound with Multiple Automobile Enterprises
Due to the absence of popular figures such as Lei Jun, Yu Chengdong, and Zhou Hongyi, the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show was a bit quiet. However, Huawei Qiankun, a new intelligent automobile solution brand under Huawei, began to step from behind the scenes to the front stage as an automobile enterprise supplier.
The reporter noticed during a visit to the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show that Huawei Qiankun participated as an independent exhibitor and displayed cooperative models such as the Voyah Taishan, Avatr 07, Dongfeng Mengshi M817, and Xiangwang S9 at its booth.
Online, Huawei Qiankun launched a 3-day live tour of the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show, collaborating with 5 automobile enterprises including Dongfeng Mengshi, Avatr, Deepal, SAIC Audi, and Dongfeng Nissan to reach consumers.
Meanwhile, when visiting the booths of independent brands such as Dongfeng Mengshi, Avatr, and FAW Hongqi, as well as joint-venture brands such as GAC Toyota, Dongfeng Nissan, and FAW Audi, multiple exhibition vehicles highlighting Huawei Qiankun's intelligent driving or Hongmeng cockpit could be seen.
Huawei is an object that many automobile enterprises hope to cooperate with. For example, Avatr and Huawei jointly announced at the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show that their strategic cooperation has entered a new stage.
The cooperation time, scope, and depth between Avatr and Huawei far exceed those of most automobile enterprises. Wang Hui, the chairman of Avatr, said: “The two sides jointly promoted the upgrade of the HI model to the HI PLUS model, and the cooperation scope has been expanded to all fields such as user insight, product definition, product development, integrated marketing, and team building.”
Currently, Huawei's cooperation with multiple automobile enterprises has formed a new pattern of “One Tower, Two Realms, Five Worlds”. Among them, Huawei Qiankun has cooperated with GAC Group and Dongfeng Motor to launch new automobile brands Qijing and Yijing respectively.
How did GAC Group and Huawei Qiankun launch Qijing? He Xianqing, the general manager of GAC Group, said at the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show that there were many quarrels between the two teams in normal times. Sometimes they would slam the table and walk out the door, and then come back and continue working.
“Companies engaged in technology all have a characteristic that they all think their own technology is the best.” Jin Yuzhi, the CEO of Huawei's Intelligent Automotive Solution BU, said that when there are intense quarrels between the two sides, he would propose to stop and calm down for a while, and then sort out their respective advantages and think about how to cooperate.
Meanwhile, He Xianqing responded to the question of whether there would be homogeneous competition between “Jie” and “Jing”. He believes that each brand has different positioning and appeal, facing different markets and consumers, so there is no homogeneous competition.
Qijing is positioned as a high-end intelligent new energy automobile brand. In 2026, it will launch an SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle) and a coupe model respectively, targeting the 350,000-yuan automobile market.
He Xianqing said that the characteristics of Qijing can be summarized as “Three Highs”: high appearance, high technology, and high performance. GAC Group and Huawei are committed to making this product the best in the industry.
The 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show Highlights Three Major Trends, and Automobile Enterprise Leaders Dispute the Extended-range and Pure-electric Technology Routes
Walking through the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show, one can clearly feel that the number of new energy vehicles has increased significantly. Official data shows that there were a total of 1,085 vehicles on display at the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show, among which 629 were new energy vehicles.
Meanwhile, consumers are very enthusiastic about new energy vehicles. From November 21st to 22nd, there were large crowds at the booths of automobile enterprises such as NIO, LeDao, and Seres.
Behind the excitement of the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show, the development trends of multiple automobile industries are highlighted.
First, automobile enterprises are rushing to layout personalized and large-volume models. On November 21st, the Voyah Dreamer Shanhe under Voyah Auto was launched at the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show. It is a 4-seater flagship MPV (Multi-Purpose Vehicle) model.
Since 2025, multiple automobile enterprises have successively accelerated the launch of large-volume models, including SUVs and MPVs, mainly based on the dual advantages of “policy dividends + profit drive”.
During the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show, the first flagship MPV model V900 of Geely Galaxy and the intelligent high-end long-range SUV model of Leapmotor both made their debuts for the first time, and both mentioned the relatively high “space utilization rate” when introducing their space advantages.
Second, personalization has become the “new growth curve” that automobile enterprises are looking for. At the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show, the NIO ET9 Horizon Special Edition, an intelligent electric executive flagship, launched two new color themes, “Dawn of Daybreak” and “Sunshine on Golden Mountains”; LeDao released the L90 Black Knight Special Edition, with a limited edition of 999 units.
The ORA brand of Great Wall Motor made its appearance with the theme of “ORA 5 - The Carefully Selected Partner for Young People”. Lv Wenbin, the general manager of the ORA brand, said: “Contemporary young users need not only a means of transportation, but also a 'carefully selected partner' that can express their self-attitude, understand trends, and be practical.”
Third, new energy vehicles have occupied “half of the market” for the first time, but the dispute between extended-range and pure-electric technologies continues.
Multiple extended-range models were unveiled at the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show, including the Geely Galaxy V900, which is the first to be equipped with Geely's Super AI Extended-range System, and the XPeng X9 Super Extended-range, the first extended-range model of XPeng Motors.
He Xiaopeng, the chairman and CEO of XPeng Motors, said that for a relatively long time in the future, the development direction of global new energy vehicles is pure-electric plus hybrid technology. Among the hybrid technologies, the extended-range technology is more suitable for global promotion and application in the future.
NIO is one of the few automobile enterprises that adheres to the pure-electric technology route. Li Bin, the chairman and CEO of NIO, said in an interview with media such as China Fund News that from a global perspective, plug-in hybrids and extended-range vehicles have advantages in areas with underdeveloped infrastructure, but NIO adheres to the view that the ultimate technology route for new energy vehicles is pure-electric.
Caption: The person on the far right is Li Bin, the chairman and CEO of NIO
The development inflection point of the pure-electric technology route has appeared in the domestic automobile market. Data shows that since August 2025, the year-on-year growth rate of the sales volume of domestic pure-electric models has far exceeded that of extended-range models.
“If you do a good job in pure-electric and battery swapping, there is no need to do extended-range at all.” Shen Fei, the president of LeDao Auto, said in an interview that extended-range users may only need to burn fuel two or three times a year, and now charging in China is basically convenient enough.
AI Becomes the Keyword, Automobile Enterprises Frequently Demonstrate Their Technological Strength
At the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show, multiple automobile enterprises demonstrated their latest achievements in the field of AI. Taking Seres as an example, its released Magic Cube Technology Platform 2.0 has become a new upgrade and iteration of the Wenjie technology system.
He Liyang, the president of Seres Auto, said that the Magic Cube Technology Platform 2.0 has carried out a new upgrade of intelligent energy, intelligent chassis, EEA (Electrical/Electronic Architecture) architecture, and intelligent space, and is a smart electric vehicle platform driven by AI.
A person from an automobile enterprise believes that in the face of the wave of intelligent transformation of the automobile industry, AI technology is becoming one of the core driving forces for reshaping the automobile industry pattern.
Different from other automobile enterprises, XPeng Motors participated in the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show with the theme of “AI Changes the World” and reiterated its new brand positioning - a travel explorer in the physical AI world and an embodied intelligent company facing the world.
Recently, XPeng Motors released four applications in the field of physical AI, namely the second-generation VLA (Visual Language Action Model), Robotaxi (driverless taxi), the new generation of humanoid robot IRON, and two forms of flying cars.
He Xiaopeng, the chairman and CEO of XPeng Motors, revealed that the above four applications will enter the mass production stage in 2026. Among them, the second-generation VLA allows the company to see a definite path from L2-level assisted driving to L4-level advanced autonomous driving.
The progress and plans in the field of assisted driving are also the contents that multiple automobile enterprises hope to present at the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show.
Li Auto announced that it plans to push the innovative VLA charging and defensive AES (Automatic Emergency Steering) automatic emergency steering functions to AD Max models, and push the urban NOA (Navigate on Autopilot) function to the intelligent upgraded AD Pro models.
Fan Haoyu, the senior vice president of Li Auto's product department, said that after the Li Auto VLA driver large model is pushed, it will continue to improve through reinforcement learning, and based on its spatial understanding ability, it will bring a better parking and charging experience.
A person from an automobile enterprise told the reporter that some new automobile-making forces are trying to build full-stack self-developed capabilities around the core technology of AI terminal products, including from self-developed chips and intelligent operating systems to self-developed assisted driving and intelligent space software applications.
In addition, during the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show, some third-party assisted driving suppliers revealed their technology evolution routes. Taking DeepRoute.ai as an example, it is promoting the implementation of RoadAGI (Road General Artificial Intelligence) through its self-developed VLA model.
RoadAGI integrates two core models, VLA + VLN (Visual Language Navigation), which can enable mobile intelligent agents to navigate autonomously in the real environment based on natural language instructions. Its use scenarios cover public roads, park passages, indoor shopping malls, etc., and connect the “any point-to-point” path.
This article is from the WeChat official account “China Fund News” (ID: chinafund