Qijing GT7: GAC's Second Battle With No Way Back
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Author | Zhou Zhiyu
GAC's reform has reached the point where market pricing is about to begin.
Over the past year or so, it has almost completely dismantled and rebuilt its self-owned business. The headquarters moved to Panyu, the R&D, marketing and brand systems were reorganized, IPD processes introduced, and multiple BUs established one after another. All these actions ultimately have to answer one question: Can GAC still compete in the second half?
Qijing GT7 is the most important answer to this question.
On the evening of June 26, Qijing GT7 was officially launched, with a price range of 209,900 to 329,900 yuan. This is the first vehicle deeply co-developed by GAC and Huawei QianKun; within the timeline of the Panyu Action, it represents GAC's key battle facing the market after forming its new system.
The Qijing GT7 is not here to prove whether GAC found a strong foreign partner, but whose hands the partner’s abilities will ultimately end up in. Huawei brings Qijing an opportunity to be seen. But what GT7 really has to answer is, after GAC completes its organizational rebuilding, can it push this new system to the market end for the first time?
The Entry Ticket
The first problem the Qijing GT7 must solve is not its selling points, but its qualification to participate.
The 200,000 to 300,000 yuan price range is no longer a market where a new car can break in simply by offering high specs. Xiaomi, Zeekr, Zhijie, Avatr are all fighting for users here, and consumers are used to comparing cockpits, smart driving, charging, chassis, user benefits and delivery side by side.
For a new brand like Qijing, the most expensive thing is not hardware, but the cost of being included in users’ comparison tables.
This is exactly what Huawei solves.
On June 26th, Huawei Car BU CEO Jin Yuzhi said that the GT7 carries Huawei’s six major automobile intelligence solutions, including QianKun Smart Drive, HarmonyOS Cockpit, Digital Chassis, Smart Car Lighting, Car Cloud, and in-car communications. More crucially, Qijing has squeezed these abilities into a starting price at the 200,000 yuan level: Standard edition at 209,900 yuan, equipped with ADS 5 Pro; Ultra edition at 239,900 yuan, offering L3 architecture full-link redundancy and ADS 5; Three-motor four-wheel-drive edition tops at 329,900 yuan.
This price is 10,000 yuan lower than the starting pre-sale price. More importantly, it means that Qijing is trying to attack the mainstream high-value price range with Huawei’s smart labeling and GAC’s manufacturing base together.
In past years, Huawei has built a very strong recognition system in the smart car market. Aito proved that Huawei can help car companies rebuild a high-end image, Harmony Intelligent Mobility turned the “Huawei series” into a product label users can directly understand. For Qijing, keywords like Harmony Cockpit, QianKun Smart Drive, 896-line LiDAR, and digital chassis are enough to put the GT7 into the same comparison table.
But that table is getting crowded. As more car makers access Huawei’s capabilities, the smart labeling itself turns from a differentiation point into a threshold. Without it, you’re hardly noticed; with only it, you’re hardly chosen. Previously, a high-level smart driving system and an easy-to-use cockpit could gain a car extra attention; now, they’re more like the checklist items users look for by default before entering comparison.
This is precisely the industry paradox facing the Qijing GT7.
It needs Huawei’s label to be noticed by users, but cannot rely solely on it to clinch deals. Once the only reason for purchasing is “it has Huawei”, brand equity is hard to retain for Qijing and GAC.
Therefore, what GT7 really needs to do is, beyond what Huawei brings, build GAC’s trustworthiness.
Jin Yuzhi described a deeper technical rationale for the GT7. He said the 896-line LiDAR was not just about stacking specs, but was “reverse-engineered based on the L3 architecture.” GT7 already obtained a Guangzhou L3-level conditional autonomous driving road test license, surpassing 300,000 km of L3 testing mileage, and completed more than 200 test items.
This shows what Huawei brings to Qijing is not just today’s intelligent driving selling points, but an advance positioning for the next stage of the autonomous driving competition.
But having advanced tech doesn’t equate to market conversion. Qijing’s “Jing” cohort system differs from that in Harmony Intelligent Mobility’s “Four Series” system. It can borrow Huawei’s smart labeling, but trades must be finalized by GAC itself. How channels operate, how deliveries remain steady, how after-sales are done, why users trust a new brand — these issues are left for GAC.
Qijing CEO Liu Jiaming said pre-orders have started; customers who lock in blind orders and small preorders before June 29 at midnight will be prioritized for production and delivery; First Edition buyers who pay 10,000 yuan deposit before 9 pm on June 27 are expected to get delivery in 2–5 weeks. Qijing is setting up more than 300 stores in over 90 cities nationwide, using experience centers and user centers to catch users through dual channels.
Being seen is only the first step. The real challenge is converting attention into orders, orders into deliveries, deliveries into reputation. Intelligence opens the door for Qijing, but GAC must prove it can retain customers.
In the first phase, car companies compete for intelligent capabilities; in the second phase, they compete on who can turn those capabilities into stable user experiences; beyond that, on who can use organizational efficiency to consistently deliver this experience to users.
Qijing GT7 has obtained the first ticket. But beyond the ticket gate, it is GAC’s own journey.
The Second Battlefield
GAC has not failed to win the first battle.
Aion once propelled GAC into the first tier of new energy. In 2023, Aion sales neared 480,000 units, and GAC proved it could achieve scale during the pure electric popularization window. But the window closed quickly. By 2025, Aion sales dropped to about 290,000.
The first battle was about who could build and sell EVs faster. Back then, GAC had manufacturing and supply chain capabilities accumulated from years as a joint venture, and Aion caught the early wave of pure electric expansion. As long as products, capacity, and price bands matched, scale could be quickly achieved.
The second battle changed the topic. Competition in smart EVs has shifted from single product capability to a systemic competition in R&D, marketing, software, channels, delivery, and user operations. Automakers must not only build cars, but also quickly identify user needs, turn them into product definitions, and convert through channels and service. Being slow means missing the window; breaking a link means configuration advantage turns into inventory pressure.
The “Panyu Action” is GAC’s organizational prep for this war.
People close to GAC told Wallstreetcn that with Qijing’s launch, GAC moves from organizational rebuilding to the second stage of system operation and market validation. According to GAC’s internal “three-year house building” theory, 2025 is to build the system, 2026 is to run it, and 2027 is full revitalization.
GAC’s greatest abilities in the past came from the JV era. The manufacturing discipline, quality control, and supply chain management learned from Toyota and Honda are its long-term foundation. But smart EVs have changed the order of capabilities. Users pay not only for reliability, but also for intelligent experience, continuous OTA, brand expression, and service efficiency.
This means GAC cannot just transplant its legacy abilities onto new energy vehicles. It needs to turn manufacturing and quality control into stability of experience for smart cars, supply chain abilities into certainty of delivery, process abilities into faster product definitions and market response.
Qijing GT7 is the converter for this.
Liu Jiaming said, Qijing and Huawei QianKun “are more conjoined than just cooperating.” He mentioned that at the project’s start, even basic terminology wasn’t aligned, parameters, feel, experience, algorithms could hardly be discussed on the same table; the move from “we, you” to “us” took about half a year.
This shows Qijing is not a simple supplier onboarding, but a realignment of two capability systems. Huawei’s methodology is embedded into GAC’s process, and GAC’s manufacturing and delivery system is responsible for making it a car that can be sold, delivered, and continually served. The real need for friction is not a cockpit or smart drive, but the interfaces between product definition, engineering validation, user operation, and quality delivery.
This friction has already played out in specific product actions.
Qijing and Huawei teams surveyed nearly 6,000 users in two years, covering about 300 cities. Liu Jiaming also said over 60% of GT7 customers are post-90s and post-00s, and 53% focus on intelligence, mainly L3 architecture and ADS 5.
This set of data explains why GT7 is not just a typical shooting brake.
It targets not the traditional “performance car players,” but smart EV era’s new high-value users: young, willing to pay for intelligence, also care about looks, space, driving, and lifestyle. For GAC, these users were not naturally its own in the past. Qijing’s task is to push GAC from its narrative of manufacturing and quality to new user relations.
This is also a shared issue faced by many traditional carmakers today.
Huawei, Momenta, Horizon Robotics, Qualcomm, CATL and other external capabilities are unraveling key modules of smart EVs for supply. The threshold to acquire abilities is lowered, but ability homogenization speeds up. Anyone can talk smart driving, cockpit, charging, and safety, but what’s scarce is: who can reorganize these modules into their own product pace and user relations.
That’s Qijing’s challenge.
It cannot retreat to the old narrative of “I can build cars” of traditional automakers, nor hand over user mindshare entirely to Huawei. It must prove, between the two, that GAC is not just a receiver of Huawei’s abilities, but the orchestrator that reorganizes them into operational results.
What Qijing GT7 tests is not whether GAC found a strong partner, but whether GAC can internalize external abilities.
If Huawei only brings a roar of attention, then Qijing GT7 is just a new car with higher “Huawei content”; if GAC can consolidate joint operations, process co-building, manufacturing system and channel touchpoints, Qijing might become the first operational sample of the Panyu Action. The difference is huge: the former is a product collaboration, the latter is organizational capability upgrade.
GAC needs Qijing GT7 to hold the price, stabilize delivery, and let GAC establish new recognition in the 200-300,000 yuan smart NEV market. Only then will the Panyu Action move from organizational charts to tangible orders.
Huawei has brought Qijing to the table. But after GT7’s launch, what is truly tested by the market is not “Huawei content”, but whether GAC can turn an external entry ticket into its own operational chips.
What stays at the end is not the hype from launch events, but effective orders, deal prices, channel conversion, delivery reputation, and the reusability for the next car. Only when these outcomes fall on GAC’s ledger, will Qijing not be just another Huawei partnership but the first operational sample after the Panyu Action reaches the market end.
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