深向科技造车 供应商赚钱？

This article focuses on Shenxiang Technology, an intelligent heavy-truck startup incubated by Baidu and Lionbridge Group, and outlines its current development standing and core challenges as it makes its second attempt at an IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Core performance: Founded three years ago, Shenxiang’s revenue has surged from RMB 426 million to RMB 3.961 billion, an almost nine-fold increase in scale. Its new energy heavy truck deliveries are projected to exceed 8,000 units in 2025, representing a 167% year-on-year growth. Operating cash flow has turned positive at RMB 835 million, indicating the company has初步 developed self-sustainability. However, cumulative net losses over three years reached RMB 1.713 billion, and its gross margin stood at only 4.9% in 2025, far below the industry average of 10% to 20%, making revenue growth without profit a prominent issue.

2. Existing challenges and future plans: Shenxiang adopted an asset-light OEM model to achieve rapid mass production, but this leaves it with highly concentrated supply chains, heavy reliance on suppliers, and severely compressed profit margins. The company is now building an in-house smart three-electric (battery, motor, electronic control) factory to bring core components in-house for R&D and production, with plans to optimize its supply chain to raise gross margins. It follows a path of commercializing L2 autonomous driving first to generate cash flow, then use accumulated operating data to feed back into L4 R&D.

Shenxiang Technology’s growth path and current challenges offer valuable reference for new energy commercial vehicle brand operations and development. Key insights are as follows:

1. Industry trend observation: New energy heavy truck penetration has now exceeded 30%, and industry competition has shifted from early-stage market share grabbing to a marathon focused on total cost of ownership and ecosystem collaboration. Pure performance competition is outdated; the core of competition now lies in helping customers cut total life-cycle costs, and full-industry-chain ecological service capabilities have become the core competitiveness.

2. Transferable product R&D path: Shenxiang adopts a R&D strategy of forward product definition plus integrated software and hardware development. It first deploys L2 intelligent driving at scale to generate cash flow and collect real-world operating data, then uses these resources to advance L4 R&D, forming a data flywheel effect. It also leverages Baidu’s existing technology reserves to lower R&D barriers and shorten validation cycles — a path well-suited for intelligent commercial vehicle development.

3. Risk takeaways: While the asset-light OEM model enables fast expansion, it leads to weak supply chain control and allows upstream players to squeeze profit margins. Brands need to build in-house R&D capabilities for core components as early as possible to secure stable profit margins and withstand industry price wars.

The new energy heavy truck track is now in a white-hot elimination phase, and industry practitioners can draw insights on opportunities and risks from Shenxiang Technology’s development. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Market opportunity assessment: New energy heavy trucks operate in the trillion RMB road freight market and remain in a growth stage. As a means of production, customers have clear demand for total life-cycle cost reduction, and integrated solutions that include energy replenishment, financing and fleet management are particularly favored by the market, leaving abundant room for growth in market segments.

2. Adaptable business model: Shenxiang uses a cross-industry resource integration plus asset-light OEM model, which quickly avoids heavy asset investment and long qualification approval cycles, enabling mass production in just two and a half years. It follows a "cash flow along the way" closed business cycle, using cash flow and data from L2 vehicle sales to support advanced R&D — a model well-suited for intelligent heavy truck startups.

3. Risk warnings: The industry is currently experiencing fierce price wars, and traditional OEMs dominate the market relying on supply chain advantages. Highly concentrated supply chains expose players to delivery and cost risks, and low gross margin models have weak risk resilience. Practitioners need to lay out core capabilities as early as possible, optimize supply chain structure, and expand profit margins.

Shenxiang Technology’s growth brings new commercial opportunities and transformation insights for finished vehicle and component factories. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Product and design requirements: The current new energy heavy truck market requires products adapted for long-haul logistics, with a core focus on reducing total life-cycle costs. Intelligence and connectivity are the core design trends, and the performance and cost of three-electric core components — which account for 60% of total vehicle cost — directly determine a vehicle’s competitiveness.

2. Accessible commercial opportunities: Shenxiang is only bringing core three-electric components in-house for R&D and production, and still relies on external suppliers for other components, creating order and partnership opportunities for component factories with mature technology and available production capacity. In its early stage, Shenxiang’s OEM model also added order volume for established OEMs with idle capacity, expanding their revenue sources.

3. Transformation insights: Demand for intelligent features in new energy heavy trucks is growing steadily. Factories need to upgrade production technologies for autonomous driving and intelligent connectivity to meet the customized production requirements of new brands, in order to secure long-term stable cooperation and keep pace with the industry’s electrification and intelligent transformation trend.

The evolution of the new energy heavy truck industry has created new customer pain points and market opportunities for related service providers. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Industry development trends: New energy heavy trucks have shifted from early policy-driven growth to market-oriented ecosystem competition, with penetration exceeding 30%. Competition has now upgraded to full-industry-chain competition covering finished vehicles, core components, energy replenishment and operation services. Demand for intelligent upgrading continues to grow, driving rising demand for third-party technology and operation services.

2. Core customer pain points: The main pain points for new intelligent heavy truck startups are high supply chain costs, weak bargaining power, and insufficient technology accumulation and commercial vehicle scenario resources. For end-users, the core pain point is high total life-cycle ownership cost, and there is strong demand for mature cost reduction and efficiency improvement solutions.

3. Promising market opportunity directions: Service providers can develop solutions centered on autonomous driving algorithms, supply chain integration, and end-to-end operation management to meet the cost reduction and intelligent upgrading needs of startup brands, as well as the cost reduction and efficiency improvement needs of end logistics customers. This opens up abundant growth room in the expanding B2B intelligent commercial vehicle service market.

The development needs of new intelligent heavy truck startups like Shenxiang Technology have opened up new directions for industrial platforms. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Core demand from brands: Early-stage intelligent heavy truck startups generally adopt asset-light OEM models, and their core demands include three main areas: first, production capacity support from OEM platforms to solve the problem of not owning their own factories; second, supply chain connection platforms to help diversify supplier concentration and lower procurement costs; third, access to capital platforms to secure financing that supports large-scale expansion.

2. High-potential layout directions for platforms: Platforms can address startups’ pain points by building a new energy commercial vehicle supply chain integration service platform that connects brands with high-quality OEMs and component suppliers, helping to diversify supply chain risks. They can also build industrial ecological service platforms centered on heavy truck energy replenishment, operation and financing needs to attract automakers to settle in and build network effects.

3. Risk avoidance guidance: The new energy heavy truck industry is currently experiencing intense price wars, and most startups remain unprofitable. When attracting partners, platforms should prioritize evaluating companies’ cash flow health and clear cost reduction paths, guard against systemic risks caused by concentrated supply chains, and avoid high-risk projects.

As a representative startup in the intelligent heavy truck track, Shenxiang Technology’s growth path reflects the latest industry trends and offers high sample value for industrial research. Key insights are as follows:

1. New industry trends: The new energy heavy truck track has now entered the elimination phase, with penetration exceeding 30%. Industry competition has shifted from single-product competition to full-industry-chain ecosystem competition. A new business model that combines cross-industry investor resource integration, asset-light OEM production and data-driven R&D has emerged for intelligent heavy truck startups, distinguishing them from traditional players. The "electrification first, followed by intelligence, with cash flow generated along the way" R&D path has now been preliminarily validated as feasible.

2. New emerging industry problems: While the asset-light OEM model enables rapid expansion, it leads to high supply chain concentration, weak upstream bargaining power for brands, and persistently low gross margins. Revenue growth without profit is a common dilemma for new intelligent heavy truck startups, and capital market recognition for unprofitable startup models remains uncertain, creating high uncertainty around IPO attempts.

3. New research topics worthy of investigation: Key open questions that merit in-depth research in the new energy commercial vehicle industry include: Can in-house R&D and production of core components effectively raise gross margins and eliminate supplier constraints? Can the "data-driven + commercialize first to generate cash flow" autonomous driving R&D model ultimately prove viable? And is the cross-industry integration model replicable across the industry?