Introduction: In 2024, Great Wall Motors achieved over 80% net profit growth, giving the Great Wall answer through three key capabilities.

Price wars are like the Seven Injurious Fists, while long-termism is the Nine Yang Divine Skill.

When the profitability dilemma of new energy vehicle manufacturing meets price wars, a large number of automakers fall into a "growth paradox": it's shameful to engage in price wars to stay afloat, but not joining means being eliminated. Everyone knows that price wars are like the "Seven Injurious Fists," but not many have the courage to abandon the "martial prowess" that hurts oneself, and instead devote themselves to the cultivation of the "Nine Yang Divine Skill" with an uncertain return period.

The reason is that the cost of cultivating the "Nine Yang Divine Skill" is too high. In the standard answer of long-termism, which includes technological innovation, ecosystem innovation, and globalization, each one represents high investment, high thresholds, and a long return period. Many automakers caught in price wars and profitability dilemmas either cannot afford the cost or cannot wait for the results.

With the industry trend like this, Great Wall Motors' seemingly clumsy adherence to long-termism stands out. However, the impressive financial statements prove that being "clumsy" is not necessarily wrong.

In Great Wall Motors' recently released 2024 annual report, the company delivered substantial growth in revenue, gross profit, net profit, revenue per vehicle, sales of new energy models, overseas sales, and other indicators, all reaching record highs.

Taking a closer look at this upward-trending operating performance may provide insights into how automakers span cycles.

01 Technological Innovation

The Chinese auto market in 2024 was a mixed bag: under the prosperity of new energy vehicles with a penetration rate exceeding 45%, it concealed sluggish and nearly stagnant sales growth, corporate profits dragged down by price wars, and 40% of dealers tarnished in the melee... With intensified industry competition and continued profit pressure, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers even expressed concern about the healthy and sustainable development of the industry.

In such an atmosphere, Great Wall Motors' performance report is undoubtedly valuable.

The root cause of the "increased revenue but not volume" in the automotive industry is not hard to find – price wars where low prices are used to capture market share. In the past two years of price competition, various promotional offers such as "instant discounts on final payments," "trade-in subsidies," "renewal bonuses," and "cash subsidies" have emerged endlessly, causing car prices to fall again and again. By 2025, automakers were riding on the tail of national and local "trade-in" subsidy policies, announcing price cuts of RMB 30,000 to 60,000 in one go. Some luxury car models even dipped to around RMB 150,000.

Whether to join the price war is not a choice but a life-or-death question. This is because the head effect in the automotive industry is further intensifying, making it difficult for players in the rear ranks to escape the fate of accelerated elimination. In the heyday of car manufacturing in 2018, there were over 487 electric vehicle manufacturers in China, but by the end of 2024, this number had fallen below 40.

When the industry was generally "bleeding to stay alive," Great Wall Motors exhibited a healthy growth curve. In 2024, the company's revenue was RMB 202.195 billion, a year-on-year increase of 16.73%; net profit was RMB 12.692 billion, a year-on-year increase of 80.73%. According to data disclosed by the China Passenger Car Association, revenue in the Chinese automotive industry increased by 4% year-on-year during the same period, while profits decreased by 8%.

This "counterintuitive" revenue growth is due to Great Wall Motors' refusal to practice the "Seven Injurious Fists" and instead choosing the long-termist "Nine Yang Divine Skill," clearly stating its position of "not engaging in price wars but in technological competition."

In May 2024, Wei Jianjun, Chairman of Great Wall Motors, emphasized at the shareholders' meeting: "The more intense the market competition, the more important it is to adhere to the bottom line, leverage the company's 'strengths,' and achieve quality market share; enterprises must create social value, and if they incur losses, they will not be able to sustain themselves in the long run, and must have their own 'blood-making ability.'"

'Technological innovation' is Great Wall Motors' 'strength,' accumulated and adhered to from beginning to end. From the Great Wall Deer pickup in the 1990s laying the foundation for independent technology, to the Haval H6 promoting the pursuit of independent technology after 2010, to today's technological breakthroughs and leadership in multiple new energy lines, Great Wall Motors has inscribed "technological competition" into its DNA.

Reviewing the 2024 financial report provides a more intuitive understanding of Great Wall Motors' "technological innovation" capabilities.

In power technology, the launch of the Hi4 hybrid architecture has completely rewritten market rules. For a long time, the industry has been trapped in the shackles of single-motor hybrid architectures that are "powerful with electricity but weak without it." Great Wall Motors has sparked a silent revolution with its Hi4 dual-motor series-parallel technology, not only achieving performance breakthroughs with 200km of pure electric range and 1.2L/100km combined fuel consumption but also lowering the threshold for four-wheel drive experiences from the RMB 300,000 price range to the RMB 200,000 market.

This "dimensionality reduction strike" is directly reflected in sales: In 2024, Hi4 models accounted for over 60% of sales, becoming the profit pillar of the new energy segment.

In software technology, Great Wall Motors has chosen a pragmatic path of "scenario-based intelligent driving." Its Coffee Pilot Ultra intelligent driving system focuses on high-frequency usage scenarios, with a user intelligent driving usage rate of 96% in 2024. Unlike the arms race of stacking lidar quantities, the Coffee Pilot Ultra intelligent driving system relies on the SEE end-to-end large model and daily training data throughput of 100TB, resulting in an accident rate far below the industry average in complex road conditions.

Extending our vision into the industrial chain, we find that the dividends of Great Wall Motors' "technological innovation" are being released. For example, by increasing the commonality of parts and chassis across different platforms and the commonality rate of complete vehicles, the cost of parts procurement is reduced by 30% to 50%, thereby giving rise to the agile advantage of "platform-based vehicle manufacturing." In this way, the company's technological advantages will also be smoothly converted into supply chain discourse power, further building a unique cost barrier.

Overall, the Hi4 hybrid architecture, combined with technical brands such as "Tank" and "Coffee Intelligence," has successfully enabled Great Wall Motors' "technological innovation" to streamline the cost reduction and efficiency enhancement link. The financial report shows that Great Wall Motors' gross profit margin in 2024 was 19.51%, an increase of 1.36 percentage points year-on-year, ranking it among the top 3 among independent brands. At the same time, the company's net profit per vehicle was RMB 10,300, an increase of RMB 4,600 year-on-year, also in a leading position in the industry.

Behind these impressive data lies the "technology bank" built by Great Wall Motors' 28,000 global patents. The financial report mentions that as of the end of 2024, the company had cumulatively applied for over 28,000 patents, of which over 17,000 were authorized patents, covering more than 40 countries/regions including the EU, the US, Japan, and ASEAN.

With the blessing of the "Nine Yang Divine Skill," Great Wall Motors has begun to reconstruct industry rules through technology. For example, Coffee Pilot Ultra was the first to pass functional safety and cybersecurity certifications, setting an industry compliance benchmark; Hi4-G technology implements a "same price for oil and electricity" strategy, reconstructing the cost system of commercial vehicles; through vertical integration, six core component companies such as Fengchao Yichuang and Weishi Energy have been established to disrupt supply chain rules.

02 Product Category Expansion

Behind "technological innovation" lies a complete technological forest ecosystem. That is, through the three technological bases of the urban vehicle platform, off-road vehicle platform, and intelligent platform, following the principle of "hardware division of labor + software unification," Great Wall Motors has incubated a product category ecosystem with six brands coexisting.

If the technological forest is the foundation of ecological prosperity, then product category fission is the inevitability of lush growth. For example, Haval H5 can transform into a rugged off-road warrior through the Tank platform. In this way, different product branches, emerging from different module platforms, bear differentiated product category fruits while sharing the computational power nourishment of the intelligent platform.

The efficiency of Great Wall Motors' technological forest ecosystem enables products to be matched to different technological platforms based on different positioning and usage scenarios, thereby achieving rapid and high-quality production. Meanwhile, ecosystem enterprises such as Fengchao Energy (power batteries), Horizon Robotics (autonomous driving), and Nuobo Technology (intelligent cockpits) under Great Wall Motors provide customized technical solutions for the company's product category innovation.

This technological ecological chemical reaction stems from Great Wall Motors' 30 years of product category evolution experience and strategic resolve. From the absolute dominance of the pickup truck era with a market share of 50%, to the fission and leap in the SUV wave with a scale of RMB 100 billion, to the "parallel universe" constructed by six brands in the era of technological travel, Great Wall Motors has always been able to accurately position itself in consumption trends.

This ability to insight into user needs is fully demonstrated across the six brands. Haval is positioned as the "Global SUV Expert," Weiying is the "Pioneer of High-end New Energy," Tank SUV advocates "Tough Guy with Tenderness," Ora focuses on creating "New Energy Vehicles that Love Women More," Great Wall Pickup is the leader in China's pickup truck market, and Great Wall Soul Motorcycles positions itself as "Luxury Touring Cars."

When opening up niche markets, they leverage the user demand capture system constructed by executive "400 hotlines" and "echo platforms," transforming market pulses into the source code for product category innovation in real-time. In March 2024, Great Wall Motors proposed China's first concept of personalized co-creation for automotive products, which is still deeply influencing the company's product research and development and production.

In stock competition, automakers are busy seeking a second growth curve. In the Great Wall Motors ecosystem, each brand is both a carrier for technology implementation and a growth stock. In fact, besides the two "elder brothers" of pickup trucks and SUVs, the other brands have gradually become leaders in their respective niche markets.

Therefore, when a brand stands at the top of the ecosystem, the pricing power advantage it brings is self-evident. Just as Great Wall Pickup and Great Wall SUV once rewrote the rules of the pickup truck and SUV games, the Tank brand is also redefining the performance standards and price coordinates of rugged off-road vehicles.

03 Globalization

When a brand stands at the top of the ecosystem, Great Wall Motors' forest roots have already extended to all corners of the world.

Financial report data shows that in 2024, Great Wall Motors sold 454,100 vehicles overseas, a year-on-year increase of 44.61%. Currently, Great Wall Motors has over 14 million global users, over 1,400 overseas sales channels, and cumulative overseas sales exceeding 1.9 million vehicles.

It is worth mentioning that the gross profit margin of its overseas business reached 18.76%, significantly higher than the industry average. High-value models such as Weiying Gaoshan and Tank 700 Hi4-T have a premium of 8% to 12% in Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern markets, demonstrating the success of the "technology export + brand premium" model.

According to the plan, Great Wall Motors will accelerate its "ecological overseas expansion" strategy, aiming to achieve annual overseas sales of one million vehicles by 2030, with high-end models accounting for over one-third.

"Ecological overseas expansion" can be understood as an upgrade of "product overseas expansion." For Great Wall Motors, this includes a comprehensive and full-scale overseas expansion encompassing research, production, supply, sales, and service, such as the European R&D center yet to be established, three full-process vehicle production bases and multiple KD factories in Eurasia, Thailand, and Brazil, and a sales network covering over 170 countries and regions.

In 2024, the company's high-value models were accelerating their overseas layout. Weiying Gaoshan was launched in Dubai and Europe, Tank 700 Hi4-T was launched in Kazakhstan, Tank 500 entered Chile and Indonesia, and Tank 300 entered South Africa, Mexico, Azerbaijan, and Malaysia.

Entering February 2025, Great Wall Motors ranked first in sales of Chinese brands in Australia. In March, Wei Jianjun, Chairman of Great Wall Motors, met with George Brandis, Australian Ambassador to China, to discuss the green transformation and cooperative development of the Sino-Australian automotive industry.

It can be foreseen that as Great Wall Motors' ecosystem flourishes overseas, combined with the already emerging technological overseas premium, the global market will become another "blood-making machine" for Great Wall Motors in the next five years.

04 Conclusion

In the history of automotive development, Toyota's lean production, Tesla's technological density, and Porsche's brand potential have been disassembled by later generations as the "standard answers" of the automotive industry. In the new era, Great Wall Motors has surpassed the old textbooks and presented a new Chinese solution of "efficiency × innovation × premium."

The efficiency of lean production is supported by supply chain resilience, technological innovation is supported by the RAG knowledge platform and algorithm hub, and the premium of brand potential is strengthened in the continuously enhanced high-quality product matrix.

Price wars are the industry's "collective unconsciousness," but Great Wall Motors has proven another possibility with its own "blood-making": when automakers dig deep enough moats in technology, standards, and ecosystems, they can leap from the "convoluted red ocean" to the "value blue ocean."

As a Chinese brand, Great Wall Motors has taken an early step in the cultivation of the "Nine Yang Divine Skill," unblocking the governor vessels.