September 2026 brought a wave of unusually candid statements from China's auto industry, as executives acknowledged that long-held assumptions about self-developed technology, rapid iteration and globalisation no longer hold, according to a roundup by Chinese outlet Huxiu.
Self-developed AI under fire
On 1 September, tech entrepreneur Luo Yonghao said on his personal Weibo account that after test-driving several mainstream new-energy vehicles, he found some carmakers' in-house AI models suffered from interaction lag, stiff responses and poor scenario adaptation, with experience falling short of mature general-purpose models. He suggested carmakers should directly integrate mature models such as Doubao, Qwen and Kimi, even if it meant extra fees.
Industry observers note that general-purpose chat models differ fundamentally from vehicle control systems, which must address latency, deployment costs, data privacy and safety boundaries. The real issue, they say, is the misuse of the "self-developed" label as a marketing asset rather than a genuine competitive advantage.
Quality warnings and calls for cooperation
At the World Power Battery Conference in Yibin, Sichuan, on 3 September, CATL chairman Robin Zeng warned that the battery industry is seeing a dangerous imbalance between speed, specifications, price and quality. "Making one battery is not difficult; the difficulty is making one billion batteries that are equally good," he said in a video speech, stressing that quality comes from design and manufacturing, not just testing.
Zeng's warning carries weight: in the first half of 2026, China's new-energy vehicle sales exceeded 7.4 million units, and Chinese companies occupied seven of the top ten global power battery installation spots. Yet with more than 600 new models launched domestically, some battery products have shown batch failures.
At the same conference, Chery chairman Yin Tongyue called for vehicle manufacturers, battery makers and materials suppliers to shift from working separately to a mechanism of shared risk and shared rewards. Price competition has been squeezing the entire supply chain, with automakers seeking lower procurement costs, battery firms needing to maintain profits and R&D investment, and materials companies bearing raw-material price volatility.
Size wars and market fragmentation
Li Auto founder Li Xiang predicted on 14 September that the arms race over vehicle size in the SUV segment will inevitably end, arguing that pure-electric architectures, with flat batteries and optimised motor layouts, can offer comparable interior space in shorter bodies, removing the need to keep lengthening vehicles. However, industry analysts caution that larger batteries, crash-absorption structures, third-row space and luxury features still require physical room, and consumer preference for imposing vehicles may persist.
Antonio Filosa, Stellantis' COO, told an analyst meeting on 10 September that the global auto market has split into two blocks: the United States and the rest of the world. In the US, Stellantis relies on local engineering and R&D resources, while outside the US it partners with Chinese companies such as Leapmotor and Dongfeng to speed development and cut costs.
Ford CEO Jim Farley said on 29 September at an Automotive News conference that the US must be extremely cautious about how Chinese automakers enter its market, citing Europe as a cautionary tale. He acknowledged that Ford continues to work with CATL on low-cost batteries and with Geely on European EV cooperation, explaining that the company partners with Chinese firms where it lacks capability or can improve capital efficiency.
These statements reflect not consensus but intensifying conflicts of interest, as financial pressure, user experience demands and geopolitics force companies to confront the gap between their narratives and reality, according to Huxiu.
