赛力斯的“灵魂”被抽走了吗？

This article unpacks Seres' dramatic reversal from annual profits of over 6 billion yuan to a massive net loss of 1.5 billion to 1.8 billion yuan in the first half of 2026, when its market capitalization fell below 100 billion yuan. It outlines core causes of the downturn and Seres' self-rescue efforts, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Core reasons for the loss: Beyond short-term factors including surging raw material prices and impairment of unsold inventory, long-term risks stem from Seres' extreme dependence on Huawei. For every AITO vehicle sold, nearly 130,000 yuan flows to Huawei, leaving Seres with only slightly more than 10,000 yuan in net profit — leaving absolutely no buffer for volatility. Compounding this, Huawei's expansion into multiple brands has diverted sales at the same price point, while competitors have eroded AITO's original premium, directly pushing Seres into loss.

2. Self-rescue strategy: Seres has adopted a two-pronged turnaround approach. First, it invested 11.5 billion yuan to take a stake in Huawei subsidiary Yinwang, shifting from a paid contract manufacturing model to a capital partnership in a bid to secure preferential resource access. Second, it is spinning off legacy assets to incubate AIVA, a fully independent new brand, and building a completely self-controlled supply chain with partners including ByteDance, Yuanrong Qixing and CATL.

3. Future risks: Seres still faces major challenges including intense capital pressure, difficulties in brand synergy, and split technology roadmaps. Three outcomes — stabilized transformation, successful breakout, or continued bleeding — all remain possible, with no clear trajectory yet.

This article summarizes key lessons for new energy vehicle (NEV) brands from partnerships with third-party technology firms, alongside core current market trends, with key takeaways as follows:

1. A warning on partnership models: Deep collaboration with a leading technology company can help weaker brands quickly enter the premium segment and turn around losses, but brands must guard against losing pricing power and profits. For Seres, total fees paid to Huawei account for more than one-third of revenue, extreme compressing profit margins, leaving the company vulnerable to turning from profit to loss at the first sign of cost volatility.

2. Assessment of market trends: Overall demand for China's passenger NEV market is declining, and price competition continues. Segments that once faced insufficient supply will quickly see a flood of new competitors, and the premium from early product scarcity will erode rapidly. Brands must build differentiated competitiveness well in advance.

3. A reference for transformation paths: Brands can draw on Seres' "stabilize cash flow via existing ties + open new space via independent expansion" transformation framework, but must proactively anticipate potential conflicts around capital allocation, brand synergy and technology roadmap alignment, and prepare contingency plans to avoid internal friction.

This article sorts out current industry risks and opportunities for sales participants in the NEV sector, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Risk warnings: Overall passenger NEV sales are down year-over-year, price wars continue, and the premium mid-to-large NEV SUV segment is already oversupplied. Premiums for leading brands are being diverted from multiple directions, and per-vehicle profits are falling rapidly. Businesses positioning for sales of models in this segment should watch for risks of inventory impairment and profit losses.

2. Opportunity observations: Huawei's Harmony Intelligence Mobility ecosystem has completed its five-brand layout covering multiple price points, and sellers can partner with different brands to access Huawei's traffic and resource support. Meanwhile, Seres' new fully independent brand AIVA is currently building out its sales network, creating new partnership opportunities.

3. Actionable lessons: A model that relies solely on traffic from a single leading brand has very weak risk resilience. Sellers should expand a multi-brand portfolio, prioritize partnerships with brands positioned in different, non-overlapping price points to avoid cutthroat internal competition in the same segment, and prioritize brands with healthy profit margins and strong risk resilience when evaluating partnerships.

This article outlines core insights for complete vehicle manufacturing factories on partnerships with technology companies and transformation, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Lessons for partnership models: Weaker traditional vehicle factories can leverage a leading technology company's strengths in technology, traffic and channels to quickly enter the premium segment and exit financial distress, but must strictly control their dependence on the partner to avoid excessive procurement as a share of revenue and extreme margin compression. For Seres, procurement from Huawei accounts for more than one-third of revenue, so even a single round of raw material price increases pushed the company straight into loss.

2. Insights for manufacturing operations: NEV technology and model generations are evolving at a rapid pace. Factories need to actively manage existing asset portfolios, prepare in advance for inventory impairment and production equipment depreciation driven by technology iteration, and control risks from heavy capital expenditure.

3. Insights for transformation: When pursuing transformation, traditional factories can reference Seres' two-pronged approach: on one hand, lock in existing partners via capital ties to stabilize the core business and cash flow; on the other, independently incubate new brands and build in-house supply chains to explore long-term growth room. However, factories must reserve sufficient capital in advance to avoid capital strain from dual-track expansion.

This article sorts out industry trends, client pain points and market opportunities for NEV-related service providers, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Industry development trends: The NEV manufacturing industry has entered a new phase, with overall demand declining, intensifying price competition, and rising raw material costs compressing margins across the sector. At the same time, industry cooperation models are diverging: some automakers continue deep integration into technology company ecosystems, while others are moving away from existing tech giants to build new independent technology alliances. A diversified industry structure has now formed.

2. Core client pain points: Key current pain points for automakers include: thin profit margins and weak risk resilience from over-dependence on technology companies; need for extensive support including channel development, brand marketing and user education for newly incubated independent brands, which outstrips the capacity of existing service providers; and split technology systems for automakers pursuing dual-track transformation, which require solutions to coordinate R&D resources.

3. Market opportunities: Service providers can develop offerings aligned with automakers' independent transformation needs, including new brand marketing, channel development, and multi-technology system coordination. They can capitalize on the wave of new independent technology alliances to enter the supporting service market.

This article sorts out industry demand and layout insights for automotive platform players, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Core demands of automakers from cooperative platforms: Weaker startup automakers need platforms to provide technology, traffic and channel support to scale quickly. Once scaled, automakers seek equal partnership status, priority access to technology and resources, and want to shed their pure contract manufacturing label to explore space for independent development.

2. Insights for platform layout: When expanding automaker partnerships, technology platforms must segment markets and price points across partner brands to avoid overlap. After Huawei expanded its Harmony Intelligence Mobility ecosystem to multiple brands, overlapping price points led to internal sales diversion that severely impacted the original AITO partnership. Clear brand segmentation is required to avoid internal friction and maintain overall ecosystem stability.

3. Risk mitigation: When expanding partnerships, platforms must monitor partner profitability and financial health to avoid ecosystem disruption from a partner's capital chain rupture. They also need to balance resource allocation across partners, protect the interests of both early collaborators and new partners, and avoid conflicts that undermine ecosystem layout.

This article provides the latest case study and research materials on the Huawei-led智选 car (Zhixuan) model for industry researchers, with key insights as follows:

1. New industry developments: Huawei's Zhixuan model has evolved from its early days of exclusive partnership with Seres AITO to a mature multi-brand matrix model, with commercialization now fully validated. Seres, the original partner, has launched a two-pronged transformation of "tying Huawei via capital + incubating independent new brands" after facing profit declines and growth stagnation. This represents an entirely new attempt by a contract manufacturing automaker to break out within the Zhixuan framework.

2. Summary of new structural issues: The Zhixuan model has inherent structural flaws: contract manufacturers bear all the risk of heavy capital investment and market volatility, while technology companies earn steady returns regardless of performance. After multi-brand expansion, early partner automakers face dual pressure from internal sales diversion and external competition, and thin profit margins leave no buffer, making a shift from profit to loss highly likely. Automakers pursuing dual-track transformation also face new challenges including conflicting resource allocation, difficult brand synergy, and split technology roadmaps.

3. Research value: This article presents the full lifecycle of the Zhixuan model: from launch and growth to the emergence of problems and the partner automaker's self-rescue efforts. It provides a complete, typical case study for research into business models that pair technology companies with vehicle manufacturers, and can be used to analyze the strengths, weaknesses and optimization paths of this partnership model.