It only took two years to reach one million sales. Can the success of this Chinese car be replicated?

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It only took two years to reach one million sales. Can the success of this Chinese car be replicated?

New energy industry observation

2026.11.10 18:05

· From Beijing

Full text 3367 words

Article | New Energy Industry Observation

Looking back on the 140-year history of the automobile industry, the record holder for the shortest time to sell one million vehicles was Ford's original Mustang, which took only 22.5 months.

Sixty years have passed, and it took 24 months for my country's A0-class pure electric car to become the fastest new energy vehicle in the world to reach one million sales. It is Geely Xingyuan.

Although Geely Xingyuan did not break the record of Ford Mustang, objectively speaking, Geely Xingyuan may have to endure more competitive pressure and room for error in order to achieve speed in the Red Sea market where hundreds of pure electric models compete every year.

What's more worthy of consideration is not its "fastness", but its growth curve. In May 2025, Geely Xingyuan will usher in the delivery of its 200,000th vehicle; in March 2026, Geely Xingyuan will deliver a total of 600,000 vehicles; in August of the same year, 800,000 vehicles will be delivered, and the last 200,000 vehicles took only more than two months.

The weight of this incident does not lie in the birth of another real hit, but in that it proves that in a market segment that has long been ruled by the logic of "low price and low allocation", it is feasible to turn "no need to settle" into a sustainable large-scale business.

1.The default answer for A0-class cars has been rewritten.

Before the emergence of Xingyuan, the A0-class pure electric market had an unspoken configuration list, namely front drive, torsion beam, small battery, hard plastic interior, etc. Consumers seem to have acquiesced, "it's enough to pick up a baby and buy groceries." No one seriously asked: What is the bottom line for a car worth 60,000 yuan?

Xingyuan thought about it and changed the benchmark directly.

Rear-mounted rear drive, multi-link independent suspension, all CATL lithium iron phosphate batteries plus Aegis battery safety system, 70L front trunk, 14.6-inch large screen and Flyme Auto cockpit, the Elk test can reach 80.7km/h.

The starting price of 64,800 yuan can be installed, not by some black technology, but by shifting the cost from fancy concepts to the chassis, batteries and cockpit that users can perceive every day.

The rolling product power quickly entered the sales list. In the A0-class pure electric market, Xingyuan's share exceeds 30%, and one of every three A0-class electric vehicles sold is it. Products of the same level were forced to follow suit, and independent suspension, large batteries, and smart cockpits changed from "optional" to "must-have".

Among the many competitors, the one that really competes head-on with Xingyuan is Seagull, and its price range is almost the same. Star wish ranges from 64,800 to 94,800, and Seagull ranges from 65,900 to 99,900.

What Xingyuan does is addition, using personalized versions to expand boundaries. For example, it recently launched two new models of the STAR limited series for young people: STAR Ace and STAR Chill. The two new cars have a limited-time equity price of 88,800 yuan. They come standard with an electric trunk and an EVA robot unique to their class.

The second generation of Seagull has been restructured to make up for the missing hardware in the first generation such as rear drive, independent suspension, and flash charging. However, neither recent sales nor annual cumulative sales have yet reflected the competitiveness of these configurations, and it will take several more months to observe.

Although Xingyuan is temporarily ahead in terms of sales, with the Leapmoon A10 pushing the 8295 chip and lidar options to 60,000 levels, and the "sentimental car" Chery QQ3 pure electric resurrecting, the "stack" itself is no longer Xingyuan's exclusive advantage.

The configuration bottom line of a market segment has been redrawn, but two small cars have become negative examples.

Ten years ago, Honda Fit and Volkswagen Polo were A0-class benchmarks, with monthly sales of 10,000 to 20,000 units; now, the fate of Fit and Polo in the Chinese market can only be "exited".

Rather than saying it is an “electrification replacement,” it is better to say that the value standards they established in the era of fuel vehicles have been repriced on electric vehicles. When an electric car costing more than RMB 60,000 can be equipped with rear-wheel drive independent suspension and CATL batteries, when consumers look back at fuel-powered cars at the same price, they will no longer see "classics" but "make do".

2. Car owners no longer have to pay for “make do”

Li Ming (pseudonym) is an e-commerce operator in Hangzhou. At the end of 2024, he replaced his six-year-old Honda Fit. That Fit accompanied him to weddings, moves, and picking up children. Apart from maintenance and tire maintenance, it almost never went to a repair shop.

The reasons that triggered him to change cars were very specific and somewhat accidental. His daughter is in elementary school and takes the Zhonghe Elevated Expressway during the morning and evening rush hours every day. The sound insulation and chassis of the Fit become particularly clear in the congested traffic. But once he drove a friend's new energy vehicle, and the sense of tranquility made him understand that it was not that the Fit was bad, but that "it turns out it doesn't have to be like this."

At Geely Galaxy's 4S store, the salesperson didn't mention zero-to-zero acceleration. He just folded the rear seats down and let him stuff his daughter's folding bicycle into it. Then he pointed to the front trunk and said that the charging cable didn't need to be squeezed together with the things in the trunk.

There was a section of the test drive route where there was road construction, and the multi-link rear suspension did not sway excessively when the car was over a series of potholes. He made up his mind on the spot, but he had to wait nearly seven weeks to pick up the car.

After driving it for more than a year, with a mileage of 23,000 kilometers, he commented that "a car worth 70,000 yuan does what it needs to do well." The 310-kilometer version can actually run 280 kilometers in the spring and autumn of Hangzhou. It is charged once a week, and the monthly electricity bill at home is less than 150 yuan.

Of course, Li Ming also discovered the shortcomings of Xingyuan, such as obvious tire noise at highway speeds exceeding 110 km/h, and the smell of the new car in the first two weeks. But in his opinion, this is an acceptable shortcoming at this price, not a defect that needs to be tolerated.

In our contacts, Li Ming’s car experience is very representative. If Fit teaches users that a car can be reliable, then Xingyuan changes expectations for the "bottom line" of cars. What you buy with the price difference is not the configuration list, but a little less comfort during your 40-minute commute every day.

But "don't make do" can't just rely on the first three months of a new car. The biggest concern when getting started with pure electric vehicles is actually whether the battery will deteriorate and the chassis will not fall apart after long-term use.

Xingyuan recently announced a set of 220,000 kilometers of actual vehicle tests in service completed in conjunction with the China Automotive Industry Center: a 310km dream version that a user actually traveled 220,000 kilometers with a comprehensive road endurance rate of 99.7%. The Elk test reached 78.1km/h, and the chassis control did not deteriorate significantly after long-term use.

The battery has undergone six extreme serial tests, including high-temperature baking, seawater immersion, bottom impact, and acupuncture. The health level is still 91.19%, which is higher than the national standard threshold of 70% of 200,000 kilometers. Behind this are all CATL battery cells, Aegis battery safety system, mesh-shaped aluminum alloy battery protective cabin, plus liquid cooling temperature control and BMS3.0.

Obviously, the competition for entry-level pure electric vehicles is moving from “new car parameters” to “full life cycle reliability”. Who can clearly explain long-term attenuation, battery safety, and chassis durability will be qualified to talk about scale. Otherwise, the faster the low price sells, the more severe the backlash will be from word-of-mouth.

3. What can be copied is the configuration sheet, but what cannot be copied is the system.

As mentioned above, driven by Geely Xingyuan, independent suspension, large batteries, and smart cockpits have been lowered to the 60,000 level by car companies. Leapmo A10, Chery QQ3, and Bingo Pro are all doing similar things in different dimensions. However, it is difficult to stack materials to produce a competitive product, but it is difficult to achieve a scale cycle of one million vehicles in 24 months.

The closed loop of Xingyuan Runtong is that scale dilutes costs, costs support leapfrog configuration, configuration drives sales, and sales in turn feed back scale.

Although the starting price is low, the starting price of more than 60,000 is just an admission ticket, not a moat. What really made the cycle turn was that Geely reduced the GEA architecture manufacturing cycle to 55 seconds per vehicle, that CATL expanded its Xingyuan battery production lines from 2 to 12 within 5 months and reserved tooling flexibility, and that the Xiangtan base did not experience a large-scale delivery collapse when sales continued to jump.

Architectural capabilities, supply chain control, and manufacturing systems are the things that others cannot copy.

On the other hand, what cannot be ignored is that the proportion of Xingyuan in Geely Galaxy brand sales has risen to 50.5% in the first five months of 2026, and has exceeded 54% in the past two months.

An A0-class small car supports more than half of the sales of a mainstream new energy brand. Its basic role is irreplaceable, but the risk of a single product structure is also there. Once the growth rate of Xingyuan slows down, can other models be able to catch up, can the channel be sustained, and can the story of the brand's upward growth be continued? These three problems will be exposed at the same time.

Therefore, one million vehicles is a milestone for Xingyuan and a new test question. Continuously balancing quality, cost and profitability under a huge shipment scale is more difficult than the momentum itself.

Looking at it more calmly, the A0-class pure electric track has not become "easier" because of the appearance of Xingyuan. New products are entering the market in droves, safety and battery life standards are rising, driving up costs. Terminals are still highly sensitive to price, and “increase without profit increase” still hangs over the entire market segment.

Xingyuan used millions of vehicles in two years to prove that the "value war" can work in the entry-level market, but it did not prove that everyone can achieve millionaires on this road.

Fit spent more than ten years to establish the reputation of "small cars can also be reliable", and then handed over the standard to others in the electrification wave; Hongguang MINI EV opened an era in the A00 market with extremely low prices, and then gave up its position under the double squeeze of cost and policy; the difference between Xingyuan is that it did not continue to innovate in the "cheaper" direction, but turned "no need to make do with it" into a business with scale support.

The replicable part is the configuration order; the non-replicable part is the entire system that allows the configuration order to avoid losing money, not degrading quality, and not stopping production within the cost framework of 60,000 yuan. The former can be learned, but the latter is the watershed.

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