Qijing GT7, GAC's second battle with no turning back.

Author: Zhou Zhiyu

GAC’s reform is now at a point where the market must assign it a price.

Over the past year or more, it has almost dismantled and reassembled its self-owned business. Its headquarters moved to Panyu, R&D, marketing, and branding systems were restructured, IPD processes were introduced, and multiple BUs were established one after another. All these moves ultimately have to answer the same question: Can GAC still compete in the second half of the game?

The GAC Trumpchi GT7 is the most important answer to that question.

On the evening of June 26, the Trumpchi GT7 officially launched, with a price range of 209.9k to 329.9k RMB. This is the first vehicle resulting from the deep collaboration between GAC and Huawei Qiankun. In the context of the Panyu Action timeline, it marks a critical battle as GAC enters the market with its new system.

The Trumpchi GT7 is not meant to verify whether GAC has found a strong external ally; rather, it tests who ultimately owns the capabilities of that ally. Huawei gives Trumpchi the opportunity to be seen. But what the Trumpchi GT7 truly needs to answer is whether GAC, after completing its organizational restructuring, can push this new system to the market's front line for the first time.

Ticket

The first problem the Trumpchi GT7 must solve is not about selling points, but about eligibility.

The 200k to 300k RMB price segment is no longer a market where a new car can break in just by offering "high specs." Xiaomi, Zeekr, Luxeed, and Avita are all vying for users here, and consumers have long been accustomed to comparing cockpits, autonomous driving, charging, chassis, benefits, and delivery side by side.

For a new brand like Trumpchi, the most expensive thing isn't hardware; it's the cost of getting onto a user's comparison list.

Huawei addresses exactly that.

Jin Yuzhi, CEO of Huawei's Intelligent Automotive Solution BU, stated on June 26 that the GT7 is equipped with six major Huawei automotive intelligent solutions, including Qiankun Intelligent Driving, HarmonyOS Cockpit, Digital Chassis, Intelligent Vehicle-Mounted Optics, Vehicle Cloud, and In-Vehicle Communication. More importantly, Trumpchi has packed these capabilities into a starting price point of around 200k RMB: the standard version is 209.9k RMB, featuring ADS 5 Pro; the Ultra version is 239.9k RMB, offering L3 architecture full-link redundancy and ADS 5; the three-motor all-wheel-drive version tops out at 329.9k RMB.

This price is 10k RMB lower than the pre-sale starting price. More importantly, it means Trumpchi is attempting to push both the Huawei intelligence label and GAC's manufacturing foundation into the mainstream high-value price segment.

In the past few years, Huawei has built a strong recognition system in the smart car market. AITO proved that Huawei can help automakers rebuild high-end brand awareness, and Harmony Intelligent Mobility has turned the "Huawei ecosystem" into a product label that users can directly understand. For Trumpchi, keywords like HarmonyOS Cockpit, Qiankun Intelligent Driving, 896-line LiDAR, and Digital Chassis are enough to get the GT7 onto the same comparison list.

But that list is becoming crowded. As more and more automakers adopt Huawei's capabilities, the smart label itself shifts from a differentiator to a threshold. Without it, it's hard to get noticed; with only it, it's also hard to be chosen. In the past, a high-level intelligent driving system and a good cockpit were enough to give a vehicle extra attention; now, they are more like default items users check before entering the comparison phase.

This is exactly the industry paradox facing the Trumpchi GT7.

It needs the Huawei label for users to notice it, but it cannot rely solely on the Huawei label to close the deal. If the only reason users buy the car is "it has Huawei," then the brand equity will hardly stay with Trumpchi or GAC.

So what the GT7 truly needs to do is, beyond Huawei's perceptible contributions, build GAC's trustworthiness.

Jin Yuzhi provided a deeper technical logic for the GT7. He said the 896-line LiDAR is not just about stacking specs, but "derived backward from the L3 architecture." The GT7 has already obtained a Guangzhou L3 conditional autonomous driving road test permit, with over 300k km of L3 testing and more than 200 test items.

This shows that what Huawei brings to Trumpchi is not just a current intelligent driving selling point, but an early positioning for the next phase of autonomous driving competition.

But technical advancement doesn't automatically translate into market success. Trumpchi belongs to the "domain" system (the "Jing" lineage), separate from the Harmony Intelligent Mobility's "Four Realms" system. It can borrow Huawei's smart label, but GAC itself must handle the transaction. How the sales channels run, how deliveries are stabilized, how after-sales service is done, and why users trust a new brand—these questions are all left for GAC.

Liu Jiaming, CEO of Trumpchi, stated that Trumpchi's big deposit has opened; customers who locked in blind orders and small deposits before 24:00 on June 29 will receive priority production and delivery. The special launch edition players, who pay a 10k RMB deposit before 21:00 on June 27, are expected to be delivered in 2 to 5 weeks. Trumpchi has also deployed over 300 stores in 90 cities across the country, receiving users through dual channels: experience centers and user centers.

Getting noticed is just the first step; the real challenge is converting attention into orders, orders into deliveries, and deliveries into word-of-mouth. Intelligence opens the door for Trumpchi; GAC needs to prove it can keep customers coming.

In the first stage, automakers compete on whether they have smart capabilities; in the second stage, they compete on who can turn smart capabilities into a stable experience; further on, they compete on who can use organizational efficiency to continuously deliver that experience to users.

The Trumpchi GT7 has obtained the first ticket. But beyond the ticket gate, it's still GAC's own road.

Second Battlefield

GAC hasn't failed to win the first battle before.

Aion once propelled GAC into the top tier of new energy vehicles. In 2023, Aion sold nearly 480k units, and GAC proved it could achieve scale during the popularization of pure electric vehicles. But that window closed quickly. By 2025, Aion's sales dropped to around 290k units.

The first battle was about who could build and sell new energy vehicles faster. At that time, GAC had the manufacturing and supply chain capabilities accumulated over years from its joint ventures, as well as the window where Aion was among the first to benefit from the pure electric wave. As long as products, capacity, and pricing aligned, scale could come quickly.

The second battle presents a different challenge. The competition in intelligent electric vehicles has shifted from single product strength to a systemic competition involving R&D, marketing, software, channels, delivery, and user operations. Automakers not only need to build cars but also to identify user needs faster, turn those needs into product definitions, and convert them through channels and services. A step too slow, and the product window closes; a link missing, and the configuration advantage turns into inventory pressure.

The "Panyu Action" is GAC's organizational preparation for this battle.

People close to GAC told Wall Street Insights that the launch of Trumpchi means GAC is moving from organizational restructuring to the second phase of system operation and market validation. According to GAC's internal "three-year construction" analogy, 2025 is about "building the system," 2026 is about "running the system," and 2027 is about comprehensive renewal.

GAC's strongest capability in the past came from the joint venture era. The manufacturing discipline, quality control, and supply chain management left by Toyota and Honda systems have long been its foundation. But intelligent electric vehicles have changed the order of capabilities. Users don't just pay for reliability; they also pay for smart experiences, continuous OTA updates, brand expression, and service efficiency.

This means GAC cannot simply transfer its old capabilities to new energy vehicles unchanged. It must turn manufacturing and quality control into experience stability in the smart car era, turn supply chain capabilities into delivery certainty, and turn process capabilities into faster product definition and market response.

The Trumpchi GT7 is this converter.

Liu Jiaming said that the cooperation between Trumpchi and Huawei Qiankun is "more like conjoined twins than a partnership." He also mentioned that at the beginning of the project, the two sides couldn't even match basic terms; parameters, feel, experience, and algorithms were hard to discuss at the same table. It took about half a year to go from "us and you" to "we."

This shows that the Trumpchi is not a simple supplier integration project but a realignment of two capability systems. Huawei's methodology is integrated into GAC's processes, and GAC's manufacturing and delivery system is responsible for turning it into a car that can be sold, delivered, and serviced continuously. What the two sides truly need to mesh is not just a cockpit or an autonomous driving system, but the interface between product definition, engineering validation, user operations, and quality delivery.

This meshing has already translated into specific product actions.

Over two years, the Trumpchi and Huawei teams researched nearly 6,000 users and visited about 300 cities. Liu also mentioned that among GT7 customers, those born in the 1990s and 2000s account for over 60%, and 53% of customers focus on intelligence, especially the L3 architecture and ADS 5.

This data explains why the GT7 is not an ordinary shooting brake.

It targets not the traditional "performance car enthusiasts" but the new high-value users of the intelligent electric vehicle era: young, willing to pay for intelligence, and also caring about aesthetics, space, driving dynamics, and lifestyle. For GAC, these users may not have naturally belonged to it in the past. Trumpchi aims to push GAC from its old manufacturing and quality narrative toward a new user relationship.

This is also a common issue many traditional automakers face today.

External capabilities from Huawei, Momenta, Horizon Robotics, Qualcomm, and CATL are fragmenting the key modules of intelligent electric vehicles. The barrier for automakers to acquire capabilities is lower, but the speed of capability homogenization is also faster. Anyone can talk about intelligent driving, cockpits, charging, and safety; what truly becomes scarce is something else: who can reorganize these modules into their own product rhythm and user relationship.

Trumpchi's challenge lies exactly here.

It cannot retreat to the old narrative of "I know how to build cars" as a traditional automaker, nor can it fully cede user mindshare to Huawei. It must prove in between that GAC is not just a recipient of Huawei's capabilities but a leader that can reorganize those capabilities into business results.

The Trumpchi GT7 does not verify whether GAC has found a strong external ally. It verifies whether GAC can internalize the external ally's capabilities.

If Huawei only brings a wave of buzz, the Trumpchi GT7 is just another new car with a higher "Huawei content." If GAC can solidify the joint offices, co-built processes, manufacturing system, and channel touchpoints, then Trumpchi may become the first business sample of the Panyu Action. The difference is significant: the former is a product collaboration; the latter is an organizational capability upgrade.

GAC needs the Trumpchi GT7 to support its price, stabilize delivery, and help GAC establish a new perception in the 200k to 300k RMB smart new energy market. Only then can the Panyu Action move from an organizational blueprint to actual orders.

Huawei has brought Trumpchi to the table. But after the GT7's launch, what the market truly tests is not the "Huawei content" but whether GAC can turn an external ticket into its own business leverage.

What ultimately stays is not the launch hype, but effective orders, transaction prices, channel conversion, delivery reputation, and the reusability of the next model. Only when these results land on GAC's books will Trumpchi be more than just a Huawei collaboration—it will be the first business sample of the Panyu Action reaching the market front line.

Risk Disclosure and Disclaimer

    Market has risks; investment requires caution. This article does not constitute personal investment advice and does not consider the specific investment objectives, financial situations, or needs of individual users. Users should consider whether any opinions, views, or conclusions in this article are suitable for their particular circumstances. Investment based on this is at your own risk.