Each vehicle can save 200,000 RMB in fuel costs per year. Sinotruk, Sany, Dongfeng and other enterprises are focusing on electric heavy trucks. Why are new energy vehicles barely spotted in this highly lucrative and much-coveted market segment?

The new energy heavy-duty truck market is growing, with traditional automakers taking the lead, while new entrants need to find their own positioning.

On July 23, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration jointly issued the "15th Five-Year Plan" for Renewable Energy Development, explicitly proposing to vigorously promote renewable energy consumption in the transportation sector, expand new business forms such as direct green power connection, accelerate the large-scale application of new energy heavy-duty trucks, and promote the "green vehicles powered by green electricity" initiative for new energy vehicles.

Two days ago, the Ministry of Transport announced that it would arrange 220 billion yuan of ultra-long-term special treasury bonds in 2026 to support the scrapping and replacement of old operating trucks, with a focus on supporting their replacement with new energy heavy-duty trucks.

Policies have been rolled out intensively, and the market is also expanding rapidly. From industry data, Foresee Energy found that in the first half of 2026, the cumulative domestic sales of new energy heavy-duty trucks reached 126,200 units, a year-on-year increase of 85%. The penetration rate rose from less than 1% in 2021 to nearly 30%, a 30-fold increase in five years.

But the prosperity belongs to others. None of the top 10 new energy heavy-duty truck rankings in the first half of the year featured any new entrant automakers. The cumulative sales of new entrants stood at 4,256 units, accounting for less than 3% of the total market. The market is expanding and new entrants are growing, but the gap between the two is widening.

Four Players Take Half of the Market Share, New Entrants Are Squeezed Out

The market landscape of new energy heavy-duty trucks in the first half of the year is a list of traditional automakers. Sinotruk sold 19,900 units, taking a 15.8% share; Sany sold 19,200 units, taking 15.2%; XCMG sold 17,200 units, taking 13.6%; FAW Jiefang sold 16,400 units, taking 13.0%. The four companies together account for more than half of the total market share. Shaanxi Automobile, Foton and Dongfeng follow closely, taking 8.4%, 8.1% and 7.4% of the market share respectively.

Shenxiang was the best-selling new entrant in the first half of the year, with 2,931 units sold, ranking 10th. Zero One Auto sold 1,487 units, a year-on-year increase of 427.3%; Speed Leopard Heavy Truck saw a surge of 945%. The growth rate is staggering, but the absolute figure is clear: the sales of Zero One in half a year are less than that of Sinotruk in two weeks.

This is not a problem with products. New entrants have their own accumulation in vehicle integration and three-electric technology. Zero One Auto integrates the motor, gearbox, axle and power take-off into one electric drive axle, with a transmission efficiency of 94%, reducing the weight of a single vehicle by hundreds of kilograms. Their technology is not inferior.

What they lack is something else. Heavy-duty trucks are means of production, and fleet purchasers focus on total life cycle cost, after-sales maintenance convenience, parts supply stability, used car residual value and financial solutions. The service networks that traditional automakers have spent decades building cannot be completed by new entrants in a short period of time. The after-sales outlets of FAW Jiefang and Sinotruk cover every prefecture-level city across China, and their parts warehouses store complete inventories ranging from three-electric components to screws. The service stations of new entrants may still be hundreds of kilometers away.

Large logistics groups, mines and port customers have maintained cooperative relationships with traditional original equipment manufacturers for often more than a decade, including bulk procurement, customized development and long-term packaged maintenance solutions. It is impossible for new entrants to enter the market simply by offering a lower price; they have to break a whole set of ecosystem that has operated for decades.

Shenxiang was still on the edge of the top 10 list last year, but was squeezed out this year. This is no accident. When the market moves from the "usable" stage to the "usable well" stage, the competition is no longer about who has a more advanced motor, but about who can let users drive their vehicles out without worry.

Save 200,000 Yuan Per Vehicle Per Year, But The Calculation Is Not Complete

What really prompts enterprises to replace fleets in batches is the clear and calculable economic benefit.

According to reports from CCTV Finance, a person in charge of a building materials enterprise calculated such an account: 1.5 yuan saved per kilometer, 120,000 to 150,000 kilometers traveled per year, 100,000 to 200,000 yuan saved per vehicle per year, and millions of yuan saved for 20 vehicles in a year.

Shandong Port Logistics Group has made more precise calculations: The power consumption cost of pure electric heavy-duty trucks is 1.2 yuan to 1.5 yuan per kilometer, while the fuel consumption cost of diesel heavy-duty trucks is about 2.8 yuan to 3 yuan per kilometer. Based on an annual driving distance of 120,000 kilometers, pure electric heavy-duty trucks can save at least 150,000 yuan per year in energy costs. Over the full service life, a single new energy heavy-duty truck can save about 500,000 yuan in operating costs compared with fuel vehicles.

The data is clear, and no enterprise will not be tempted. Industry feedback shows that in the past, the main buyers of new energy heavy-duty trucks were large fleets of mines, steel mills and ports, which would buy 30 to 50 units at a time; now for every 100 units sold, more than 50 are new energy heavy-duty trucks, most of which are ordered by individual operators. Individual operators focus on how much money they can save per kilometer, and this calculation is simple and straightforward.

But individual operators and fleets have different decision-making logics. Individual operators can make a purchase decision on impulse once they calculate the cost saving, while fleets need to consider far more complex factors. A 49-ton pure electric heavy-duty truck has a landing price of 850,000 yuan, while a diesel heavy-duty truck of the same tonnage has a landing price of 400,000 yuan, with a price gap of more than double. Although subsidies can cover part of the gap — up to 45,000 yuan for scrapping old trucks, up to 95,000 yuan for newly purchasing new energy heavy-duty trucks, with a total maximum of 140,000 yuan — the pressure of upfront investment is real.

More critically, the economic efficiency of new energy heavy-duty trucks is highly dependent on operating mileage and energy replenishment conditions. The more you drive, the more cost-effective it is. But if the route is not fixed and the charging facilities along the route are insufficient, its advantages will be greatly reduced.

At present, new energy heavy-duty trucks are mainly used in mines, industrial parks, ports and short-distance transportation within 300 kilometers, and long-distance trunk transportation accounts for less than 1%. The case of Linyi is very illustrative: more than 70,000 heavy-duty trucks are gathered here, with more than 3,000 routes covering the whole country. Local authorities have deployed charging facilities in high-frequency scenarios such as logistics parks and steel and cement manufacturing plants, and plan to build 260 charging and battery swapping stations by 2030. But this density is far from enough to cover the whole country.

The economic calculation makes sense, but it needs to be put into practice. Before variables such as the energy replenishment network, service guarantee and residual value expectation are solved, the economic calculation is just a math problem.

To Survive, New Entrants Must Find Their Own Niche First

The core driving force behind the growing demand for new energy heavy-duty trucks comes from their total life cycle cost advantage. Under the current energy price system, the operating cost per kilometer of new energy heavy-duty trucks is 30% to 50% lower than that of fuel heavy-duty trucks. For fleets with an annual operating mileage of more than 100,000 kilometers, this gap is large enough.

But the cost advantage is universal, not the moat of any single player.

Traditional automakers have invested no less than new entrants in electrification. Sinotruk won two championships in new energy heavy-duty trucks in the first half of the year. FAW Jiefang launched coal transportation solutions, launching a product matrix covering three transportation radii: short-distance, intercity and cross-provincial, with sales in the coal scenario exceeding 7,000 units.

Traditional players are transferring the channels, services and customer relationships accumulated in the fuel vehicle era, coupled with electrification technology. This combined strategy is difficult for new entrants to counter.

However, new entrants are not trying nothing. They are testing all possible paths, including going global, financing, IPOs, and deploying battery swapping operations. Shenxiang has submitted its listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and Zero One Auto is also preparing for a Hong Kong IPO.

But what will happen after the capital from the market is burned out? Building a national service network and improving parts reserves require long-term continuous investment, which is difficult to cover solely by vehicle sales profits. New entrants rely heavily on financing to support their development. Once the capital market tightens, their expansion pace will be restricted immediately.

United Heavy Truck saw its new energy sales surge 397% year-on-year in the first half of the year, breaking into the top 10. But it is backed by Chery and CIMC, and is not essentially a pure new entrant. This case instead illustrates a problem: In the heavy-duty truck industry, it is far more difficult than imagined for players without industrial foundation to achieve breakthroughs relying solely on product advantages.

The real competitor of new entrants may not be a single traditional automaker, but a whole set of mature industrial ecosystem. Products can be iterated quickly, but the construction of a complete industrial ecosystem requires long-term accumulation. Ports, steel mills, mining areas and short-distance shuttle transportation are the core markets for new energy heavy-duty trucks. Foresee Energy believes that new entrants do not need to pursue full-scenario competition. It is more realistic to rely on their own technical advantages to develop customized models for a single scenario, accumulate benchmark customers to form scenario reputation, and expand from point to area, rather than spreading out their business across all scenarios at once.

The 126,200 units of sales in the first half of the year is a signal. New energy heavy-duty trucks have moved from the "usable" stage to the "usable well" stage. The competition at this stage is no longer about who has a more advanced motor, but about who can let users drive their vehicles out without worry and complete every trip safely. New entrants have technology and growth momentum, but what they lack is time — the time to turn products into trust, and trust into an ecosystem.

With 220 billion yuan of subsidies, the plan to build 3,000 charging and battery swapping stations, and 30,000 kilometers of zero-carbon road transportation corridors, policies are making the market bigger and bigger. But as the market expands, the one that gets a share of the cake may not be the fastest runner, but the one with the most solid foundation.

To survive in the heavy-duty truck industry, new entrants must first figure out where they want to take root.