When July sales landed, one line stood out. Leapmotor delivered 101,300 vehicles globally in July 2026, up 102 per cent year on year and its first month above 100,000. Its overseas sales were 17,000-plus, implying roughly 84,300 domestic deliveries.
Great Wall Motor sold 108,100 vehicles in July, with 62,000 exported and about 46,100 at home. Chery Group sold 276,800, of which 202,500 were exported and about 74,300 domestic. In the core home market, a newcomer not yet 11 years old out-sold two carmakers with decades of history.
Why the reversal happened
Great Wall’s domestic volume has slipped from 59,100 in March to 46,100 in July. Chery’s domestic sales dipped to 65,600 in June before a small July recovery to 74,300, while its exports climbed past 200,000. Leapmotor, by contrast, rose every month from March to clear 100,000 in July. The curve is not a spike; it is a steadily steepening slope.
What the incumbents lack
For Chery, the gaps are a lack of high-volume NEV hits, weaker intelligent-driving experience and a complex multi-brand structure. Its NEV share reached 46.6 per cent in July, with domestic NEV penetration above 60 per cent, yet its best-selling Fengyun T9L moved only 4,545 units in June. Most high-volume models such as the Tiggo 8 and Arrizo 8 support only basic L2, with city NOA limited to top trims. Leapmotor’s new B-series puts lidar and door-to-door assistance on an 110,000-yuan-class car.
Great Wall’s issues are a lagging NEV transition, a fragmented product line and a visible intelligence gap. Its July NEV share was about 32 per cent, held near that level for three months, and it has no pure-electric passenger car outside the Ora brand. Its line-up is all SUVs and crossovers, with no sedan at all, ceding close to half the market: sedans were 40.3 per cent of passenger-car sales in the first half of 2026.
The fightback
Both are responding. Chery, with Huawei, built the Zhijie brand, investing over RMB 20 billion and holding 30,000-plus joint patents; it is rolling out the Falcon driving system across more than 35 models by 2026, with city assist reaching the 100,000 to 200,000 yuan mainstream band on the Exeed ET5 (560 TOPS, Horizon Journey 6P). Great Wall is electrifying classics like the Tank 300 and bringing in outside suppliers alongside its own Coffee Pilot.
The export halo masks a softer home front. Both incumbents still lead abroad, but the domestic market remains the foundation of a Chinese carmaker’s scale. Closing the gap will depend on how fast they can complete the NEV pivot and close the intelligence gap.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original CheDongXi report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience.