On the first trading day of the new year, six major listed automakers released their annual sales reports. Overall, all six companies reported sales growth, with BYD achieving the highest total sales volume and Geely Auto registering the fastest growth rate. Among them, Great Wall Motor not only had the lowest sales volume but also the slowest sales growth rate.
If measured against the target set in 2021 by Great Wall Motor Chairman Wei Jianjun—to achieve annual sales of 4 million units by 2025—the company only reached approximately 30% of that goal in 2025. Furthermore, against the target for new energy vehicles to constitute 80% of total sales by 2025, NEVs actually accounted for less than 30% of Great Wall Motor's sales last year.
The year 2025 marked a significant sales surge for Chinese automakers. For the full year, China's overseas vehicle sales surpassed Japan's for the first time, claiming the top spot globally. In the domestic market, the market share of Chinese brands reached a new high, although this was accompanied by intensified competition and declining profitability across the industry. During this period, Great Wall Motor found itself navigating a challenging landscape, with its profitability noticeably constrained.
In response, Wei Jianjun has frequently stepped into the spotlight, even launching his own social media channels in an attempt to connect more closely with end consumers. As L3 commercial licenses begin distribution in 2026, intensifying the focus on intelligent technology competition, Great Wall Motor must proceed with even greater caution.
On January 5th, Great Wall Motor announced its full-year vehicle sales for 2025 reached 1.3237 million units, representing a year-on-year increase of 7.33%. However, December sales were 124,000 units, a decrease of 8.33% compared to the same month last year, failing to show the typical year-end sales surge.
Structurally, sales of Great Wall Motor's new energy models reached 403,600 units in 2025, growing 25.44% year-on-year, while overseas sales hit 506,100 units, an increase of 11.68%. Growth in these two segments helped drive the company's overall sales increase.
Analyzing by brand: The Haval brand remained the sales pillar, with cumulative sales of 758,600 units in 2025, accounting for 57.31% of total sales and growing 7.41% year-on-year. The Wey Pai new energy brand saw a significant annual growth rate of 86.29%, but its contribution to total volume remained small, accounting for less than 10% of annual sales. The Ora brand, which carried high expectations, was the weakest contributor among Great Wall's sub-brands. While its December sales of 8,134 units represented a 71.60% increase, its full-year sales of 48,000 units actually contracted by 23.68% compared to 2024.
Analyzing by powertrain: 2025 was a year of expansion for Great Wall Motor's new energy models, with sales growth exceeding the industry average. Notably, the Wey Pai brand launched several popular models, such as the Gaoshan MPV and the Lanshan SUV, which achieved both high selling prices and solid sales growth. In contrast, the Ora brand, intended to represent Great Wall's "all-out push into the NEV market," has underperformed significantly.
Analyzing by market: Overseas performance outpaced the domestic market. Great Wall Motor achieved a record 506,100 units in overseas sales during 2025. Excluding overseas sales, domestic sales were 817,600 units, an increase of only about 37,000 units compared to 780,000 units in 2024.
How did the capital market react? When trading opened on January 5th, Great Wall Motor's A-shares and H-shares both opened lower and continued to decline. The H-share price even plummeted by 7.28% intraday. By the market close, the A-shares were down 1.46%, while the H-shares had fallen 6.15%.
Clearly, the market viewed the results as "below expectations." Regarding the achievement of its sales target: based on the "Great Wall Motor 2025 Strategy" announced by Chairman Wei Jianjun in June 2021, which aimed for sales of 4 million units, revenue exceeding 600 billion yuan, and cumulative R&D investment of 100 billion yuan over five years—a target that has not been publicly adjusted since—Great Wall Motor achieved only a 33% completion rate for its 2025 sales goal, falling far short of the ambitious 4 million unit pledge. According to statistics from the自媒体"A Gui Shuo Che," Great Wall Motor's target achievement rate ranked at the bottom among mainstream automakers.
From a sales structure perspective, the primary reason for Great Wall Motor's lagging sales growth is the poor performance of the Ora brand, which failed to become the intended "engine" for the company's new energy transition. By comparison, Geely Auto's "Geely Galaxy" brand achieved sales of 1.2358 million units in 2025, a massive increase of 150% year-on-year. The Geely Xingyuan model alone sold 470,000 units in 2025. The success of Geely Galaxy has even impacted BYD's domestic sales. The Ora brand, named after the renowned scientist Leonhard Euler, was established as early as 2018 and launched the A00-segment R1 model. The全新改款Ora Black Cat was launched in July 2020.
In contrast, Geely's A0-segment sedan, the Xingyuan, was not launched until October 2024—arriving four years later than the Ora Black Cat. Yet now, the monthly sales of the Xingyuan alone are comparable to the Ora brand's entire annual sales volume. Ora started early but has fallen behind. Where did things go wrong? There has been ample analysis regarding Ora. This includes its product and brand positioning leaning towards female consumers, which initially successfully built recognition. However, as more mainstream products like the BYD Dolphin, BYD Seagull, and Geely Xingyuan entered the market, offering customers more choices, Ora was gradually abandoned by its core female user base. Great Wall Motor's internal management surely has its own reflections on this matter. In the crucial mainstream market for vehicles under 100,000 yuan, Ora has failed to shoulder the volume-sales responsibility for Great Wall's NEV transition, causing the company's electrification progress to lag noticeably behind its competitors.
Objectively speaking, the Wey Pai brand's stronger sales performance this year can be attributed to several factors: Great Wall's solid reputation accumulated in the SUV sector; the Hi4 plug-in hybrid system achieving a good balance between power and fuel consumption; and the application of intelligent driving assistance systems enhancing the technological appeal of its products. It is precisely for these reasons that Wei Jianjun recently disclosed publicly that "the average selling price of Great Wall's domestic products is as high as 200,000 yuan, while competitors' are around 130,000 yuan." The price of the Wey Pai Gaoshan 9 even reaches 390,000 yuan, and the Lanshan is priced around 300,000 yuan. Great Wall Motor is very serious about "making money."
Wei Jianjun stated at the 2023 World Internet Conference that "If Great Wall Motor can't make money, almost no car company in China can make money." Great Wall has consistently operated with this principle, but as investments in R&D, marketing, and other areas increase, its profitability is also beginning to show strain. Financial data shows that for the first three quarters of 2025, Great Wall Motor achieved operating revenue of 153.582 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.96%; however, net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 8.635 billion yuan, a decrease of 16.97% year-on-year. This was primarily due to increased costs, such as selling expenses surging to 7.948 billion yuan (compared to 5.110 billion yuan in the same period last year) and R&D expenses rising to 6.636 billion yuan (compared to 6.210 billion yuan previously).
In 2021, Wei Jianjun also proposed a cumulative R&D investment of 100 billion yuan over five years. What was the reality? According to revelations made by Wei Jianjun at the China Brand Forum in November 2025, Great Wall Motor's actual R&D investment over the past five years was nearly 50 billion yuan. Viewed this way, R&D investment only reached half of the 100-billion-yuan target. However, this point should be considered objectively; after all, without significant sales growth and increased revenue, a company must balance its R&D expenditures comprehensively.
Starting from 2024, Wei Jianjun has frequently taken a more public-facing role. He not only participates in events regularly and makes pointed comments but has also opened personal social media accounts, appears in short videos, and interacts with netizens. His sharp, straightforward remarks and his slightly awkward yet domineering CEO persona have garnered him a substantial following. For instance, recently, when a media member asked, "Your clothes only cost one or two hundred yuan, do you think that's appropriate?" Wei Jianjun first looked puzzled, then laughed and replied, "I think it's appropriate; this cost me nearly three hundred yuan," causing the surrounding crowd to burst into laughter.
Even more amusingly, whenever Chairman Wei posts a short video, especially one featuring a meal, netizens enthusiastically create memes, often referencing the character "Zhao Dehan who spends not a single cent," fully embracing the comedic atmosphere.
This, of course, showcases his approachable side, and netizens' evaluations of Wei Jianjun are largely positive. Jokes aside, overall, Wei Jianjun's short video persona is highly consistent with his real image—that of authenticity. This authenticity was on display again recently when he spoke bluntly, taking aim at industry practices. On December 16th, in an interview with CCTV News' "China Economic Gravitational Field," Wei Jianjun once again stated frankly, "The current era is rather浮躁." He criticized many automakers for being "driven by capital, unable to settle down and focus on developing real technology," instead resorting to "seemingly flashy but impractical technologies to deceive both consumers and investors." He specifically mentioned that "gigacastings might appear highly integrated, but they essentially transfer repair costs to the user."
These comments serve, on one hand, to articulate Great Wall Motor's car-making philosophy and, on the other, to critique perceived industry malpractices. But ultimately, what strategies can Great Wall Motor deploy in 2026? First, organizational restructuring is seen as a key breakthrough. Replacing the "one-person-multiple-roles" model with a "one-brand-one-leader" system is intended to bring the company closer to the market and shorten decision-making chains. The history of the Wey Pai brand having 8 CEOs in 9 years might finally come to an end. While the industry widely adopts "gigacasting" technology, Great Wall shows little interest. Instead, the company plans to launch an "All-Power Intelligent Super Platform," capable of accommodating five powertrain systems: plug-in hybrid, pure electric, hydrogen fuel cell, mild hybrid, and traditional fuel. This platform aims to enable one vehicle model to support multiple powertrains, stances, and categories.
In the intelligent driving domain, Great Wall is entering a "catch-up mode." In December, the new Lanshan Intelligent Advanced Edition became the first model equipped with Great Wall's self-developed CPilot Master ADAS based on the VLA large model, capable of point-to-point assisted driving. This is a crucial step in addressing the market's perception of its "weakness in intelligent driving." Additionally, Great Wall is collaborating with suppliers like DeepRoute.ai and Momenta.
Even though competition was fierce in 2025, the automotive market in 2026 is likely to be even more challenging. Morgan Stanley recently indicated that it expects the domestic passenger vehicle market scale to retreat to 28.5 million units in 2026, a decrease of 5% year-on-year. UBS has similarly revised its expectations downward, forecasting a -2% growth rate for domestic passenger vehicle sales in 2026 due to demand pull-forward effects and a high comparative base.
Facing a more difficult 2026, automakers are currently gearing up for battle, not only stockpiling numerous new models but also engaging in an "arms race" featuring upgrades like extended range and enhanced assisted driving capabilities. Furthermore, in December 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially announced China's first batch of L3 conditional autonomous driving model access permits, signaling an acceleration in L3 adoption.
For Great Wall Motor, achieving sales growth while maintaining its relatively high average selling price and reversing the profit decline will undoubtedly present a formidable challenge in 2026.
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