Veteran American brands are placing their bets back on the "family" track.

Author: Chai Xuchen

Editor: Zhou Zhiyu

The classic American brand Buick has also entered the comfort zone of the new forces family track.

On May 6, 2026, Buick officially announced that deliveries of the Zhi Jing E7 had exceeded 5,000 units. This was just two weeks after its launch. A successful initial battle, this veteran joint venture car company has established a foothold in the electric SUV market encircled by new forces.

A sales channel insider told Wallstreetcn: "Buick stores have an average of 8 groups of customers each day, and 3-4 groups are all coming to see this car." Obviously, Buick made the right bet this time. But successfully breaking out won’t be as easy as imagined.

In the past two years, the electric car market entered the deep competition zone, with the main line being continuous technological upgrades. Higher voltage platforms, more complex driver-assistance systems, stronger computing power—these have become almost all brands’ paths to prove their own value.

But this narrative of simply “stacking features” is reaching a bottleneck. An executive from a new force told Wallstreetcn, “User budgets are rigid, and the experience improvements brought by technology don’t always translate linearly, especially in the massive family market.”

“Many users, after comparison, aren’t actually looking at parameters, but at which car feels more like a family car,” said another channel insider.

This gave Buick its breakthrough. Instead of using one car to cover everyone, it narrowed its target, returning to the familiar family-use scenarios, which happen to be Buick’s original stronghold.

Ten years ago, Chinese family users couldn’t avoid considering Buick when selecting a car. The GL8 stabilized both business and family ends, Envision and Enclave covered the mainstream family SUV market—decent, comfortable, able to fit the whole family—these were the brand’s basic assets.

This logic worked for a long time in the era of gasoline cars, even becoming one of the moats for joint venture brands in China. But new energy vehicles have disrupted this order.

New forces use “refrigerator, big TV, large sofa” to redefine the family travel experience, and when domestic brands punch through prices with cost and efficiency, Buick’s old family narrative needs to be sharper.

A person close to Buick’s product team mentioned that in surveys targeting family users, feedback was highly concentrated on basic issues—whether children in the back seat can settle down quietly, whether long-distance rides are comfortable, whether it’s easy for elderly to get in and out. These needs don’t create opportunities for flashy tech, but they represent the most frequent use cases.

This thinking is similar to that of Li Auto. An executive at Li Auto once told Wallstreetcn that their internal core strategy is to avoid being dragged into market competition, and instead deeply mine for increments from every aspect of user needs and experience, ultimately relying on reputation for circle-level communication.

It can be said that Buick has copied the new forces' experience running high-end family cars and launched a dimensionality reduction attack into the 150,000 RMB segment. But making a family car at this price point comes with space and challenges.

The fact is, this is one of the largest markets, with stable demand; the pressure is that the competition is highly dense. BYD has built its base with scale and cost, Leapmotor and Deep Blue cut in with price, and the new forces are constantly pushing up the price band.

Buick also has its own breakout ideas; the E7 didn’t stubbornly pursue superiority in a single index, but instead simplified decision-making by canceling multiple versions, offering full features even at entry-level, essentially making the choice for users.

A frontline salesperson mentioned, “Many family customers no longer repeatedly compare configurations, and more quickly shift to thinking ‘is this car enough for our needs?’”

This change actually reflects a shift in consumer psychology. In the 150,000–200,000 RMB range, users don’t lack information or options, what they lack is certainty. Complicated versions and optional systems actually make the decision path longer.

The effect of this combined strategy has already shown. A Buick insider told Wallstreetcn that in Zhi Jing E7’s sales structure, families with children account for over 80 percent.

With this battle, Buick achieved a counter-attack. But sales scale is only surface-level; the real Purpose of Zhi Jing E7’s move is to answer a question: How can joint venture brands rebuild their competitiveness in the new energy era?

In the past few years, joint venture car companies weren’t moving slowly, but the cars made didn’t match what users wanted. The brand recognition built up in the gasoline era didn’t naturally continue into the new energy stage; and new products lacked clear enough user positioning.

A person long observing the industry said: “Traditional brands aren’t incapable of making cars, but don’t know for whom to make.” But now, this classic American brand is slowly finding its path in the elimination race and regaining its foothold.

For Buick, this is also an important trial before securing a place in the finals.

Industry insiders believe that the competition of electric vehicles is shifting from parameter comparison to experience comparison. Technology isn’t unimportant, but how to turn technology into a perceptible user experience is becoming the new competitive focus.

Current scenario-based competition demands higher system capability. Unlike single-point technological leadership, it requires balance across multiple dimensions, any weakness gets amplified. Secondly, family needs themselves are dynamic—children grow, family structure changes, travel scenarios expand, all constantly bringing new demands.

This means Buick products cannot stay at a one-time definition, but need continuous iteration.

A person close to the Zhi Jing E7 project told Wallstreetcn that internally, “family” is understood not as a fixed label, but as a constantly evolving set of needs. This recognition, when implemented at the product level, means Buick’s subsequent models, software upgrades, and even service systems will all continue to expand around this core.

In fact, the E7 this time has already leveraged domestic suppliers to complete its rapidly evolving smart features map. The Doubao large model + Momenta R6 intelligent driving system on board gives this family SUV confidence to compete with mainstream players.

It can be said that the Zhi Jing E7’s phased performance proves that Buick, through re-segmenting scenarios in a highly homogenized market, still has opportunities. Next, it needs to keep expanding its differences and turn these differences into long-term capabilities.

Back to the original question: Has Buick returned to its home turf?

The problem of joint venture brands in the past wasn’t that they couldn't make cars, but that they didn’t know for whom they’d make them. The Zhi Jing E7 at least answered the question of "for whom.” But from "knowing whom for" to "doing better than competitors," there’s still an entire supply chain and pricing system in between. Five thousand units in two weeks is just an entry ticket.

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