In August 2026, CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited) made a transaction that was inconspicuous in its financial reports but profoundly significant for the industry: it acquired a 24.87% stake in Qiyuan Green Power from China Power for CNY 2.556 billion, becoming the largest shareholder of the country's largest heavy-duty truck battery swapping operator. Why would a battery manufacturer spend money to buy a bunch of battery swapping stations and over 10,000 sets of battery assets circulating on the roads?
The answer lies in the transformation of heavy-duty truck electrification. In December 2025, the monthly penetration rate of new energy heavy-duty trucks in China surpassed 50% for the first time, reaching 53.89%—for every two heavy-duty trucks sold, one no longer burns diesel. Yet at the end of 2023, this figure was only 5%. The conventional market explanation is subsidy-driven, but a more thought-provoking fact is: as purchase tax exemptions and trade-in subsidies gradually phase out, the sales growth rate in the first half of 2026 still reached as high as 85%. The hand of policy is loosening, but the legs of the market are running even faster. The true turning point of this industry is not in official documents, but in the ledgers of fleet owners.
01. TCO Beats Diesel Trucks: From "Have to Switch" to "Want to Switch"
Heavy-duty trucks are production tools, and the decision-making logic of fleets is cold and simple: buy the one with the lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). This calculation has now been completely rewritten: the purchase price of a traditional diesel heavy-duty truck is about CNY 370,000. Calculated based on 150,000 kilometers driven per year and a fuel consumption of 35 liters per 100 kilometers, the annual fuel cost is nearly CNY 370,000, equivalent to burning a new truck every year. In contrast, for electric heavy-duty trucks adopting the vehicle-battery separation model, the purchase threshold is compressed to around CNY 500,000, and the annual electricity cost is about CNY 180,000. Coupled with the savings on engine and transmission maintenance during servicing, industry estimates show that the comprehensive annual operating cost is about CNY 79,000 lower than that of diesel trucks. In other words, the purchase price difference can be recovered in about 1.5 years, and every penny saved thereafter is pure profit.
Once the economic equation balances out, the explosion in sales is merely the result. The sequence of this explosion also holds the key: closed scenarios with fixed routes, heavy loads, and high frequencies such as ports, mining areas, and steel plants were conquered first, because a single battery swapping station can serve an entire fleet; while the true decisive battlefield lies in trunk lines—where the largest transport capacity and the most stubborn diesel stock in the heavy-duty truck market are located. The plan jointly issued by eleven ministries proposes to build a 30,000-kilometer zero-carbon road transport corridor by 2030, which is equivalent to the government drawing up a timetable for this tough route. Whoever solves the energy replenishment anxiety on trunk lines first will get the biggest slice of the cake in the second half.
Hanma Technology is the most extreme sample for observing this substitution: this heavy-duty truck enterprise under Geely has completely halted the sales of fuel vehicles. In 2025, its new energy heavy-duty truck sales reached 11,819 units, a year-on-year increase of 161.66%, and in the first half of 2026, its net profit deducted from non-recurring gains and losses achieved a turnaround—halting fuel vehicle sales did not kill it, but instead brought it back to life. The production line of SANY Group operates at full capacity with a rhythm of one electric heavy-duty truck rolling off the line every 6 minutes. In June 2026, an export order for 883 electric tractor units exceeded the total export volume of China's new energy tractor units for the entire year of 2025. Research reports from Changjiang Securities and Huatai Securities coincidentally raised the 2026 penetration rate forecast to the 33%-37% range, behind which is the same judgment: after the shift from policy-driven to market-driven, the penetration rate curve will become steeper and harder to reverse.
02. Unsettled Landscape, Ecosystem First: Who Is Rewriting the Valuation Coordinates of Heavy-Duty Trucks
The ranking in the complete vehicle segment is still undergoing drastic changes. The 2025 sales leaderboard was led by BYD with a 22.8% share, closely followed by XCMG and SANY, two cross-border entrants originating from construction machinery; by the first half of 2026, the traditional leader Sinotruk overtook them to top the chart with a 15.7% market share, and its new energy heavy-duty truck sales surged by 229% year-on-year. A complete vehicle landscape without an absolute leader like CATL means that the endgame of competition is far from over, and also implies that the true certainty premium is being harvested by other segments.
This is exactly the intention behind CATL's CNY 2.556 billion. Batteries account for 40% to 50% of the cost of electric heavy-duty trucks, and CATL holds about a 50% share of the heavy-duty truck battery market, but the ceiling for the business of simply selling batteries is clearly visible. Through the Qiji battery swapping network and controlling Qiyuan Green Power—the latter holds a 55% market share in the delivery of battery-swapping heavy-duty trucks and possesses over 13,500 sets of power batteries—it is transforming itself from a battery manufacturer into an "energy operator" for highway freight: battery assetization, energy replenishment servicing, and long-term revenue. Every time a fleet swaps a battery, it collects a fee; after the batteries are retired, they can still enter energy storage stations to continue monetization. This model shift from one-time sales to continuous cash flow has commercial attributes that are close to infrastructure—the valuations given by the capital market to manufacturing and to infrastructure operators have never been on the same order of magnitude. The same logic also benefits the "water sellers": Bozhon Precision, which provides core equipment for battery swapping stations, delivered 1,842 sets of heavy-duty truck battery swapping robot systems in 2025, accounting for 39.1% of the domestic new equipment delivery volume, and its net profit in the first half of 2026 increased by 58.18% year-on-year. While operators fight for entry points on the front line, equipment manufacturers charge by order in the rear—this is the oldest money-making posture in a gold rush.
In contrast, the valuation coordinates of traditional heavy-duty truck leaders appear outdated. Sinotruk topped the global heavy-duty truck sales list in 2025, with its new energy business growth leading the industry, but the pricing given by the market remains stuck in the framework of cyclical stocks. The view in Huatai Securities' research report is representative: when the proportion of new energy revenue crosses a certain threshold, the valuation anchor of such companies will switch from "heavy-duty truck cycle" to "electrification growth," and the space for valuation repair depends on the speed of the switch rather than the direction. Weichai Power is another footnote; this power giant with a 34% market share in heavy-duty truck engines saw its new energy power system revenue increase by 200% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026. The channels and customer relationships accumulated during the diesel era are turning into the most scarce entry tickets in the electric era. FAW Jiefang's path is similar; in the first half of 2026, its net profit attributable to shareholders increased by more than 14 times year-on-year, and new energy medium and heavy-duty truck sales exceeded 20,000 units. Once the manufacturing skills of old-brand vehicle companies are connected to the track of electrification, the elasticity released often exceeds the expectations of linear extrapolation.
Back to the transaction at the beginning. What CATL bought is not just a battery swapping station network, but the right to charge for the replacement wave of 8.6 million existing diesel heavy-duty trucks—this market, calculated according to the policy target of 1.6 million new energy heavy-duty trucks in use by 2030, still has several times the space of the present. The numbers of penetration rates will fluctuate, and the debate over routes will continue, but the direction is already clear: when the money-saving accounts are laid out there, and when the energy replenishment network is laid to the trunk lines, the twilight of diesel heavy-duty trucks will not be delayed by anyone's nostalgia. In this decade-level substitution, the thickest profits will most likely belong to the ecosystem builders who hold battery assets and energy replenishment entry points, the most certain elasticity is hidden in the traditional leaders switching from cyclical valuation to growth valuation, and the equipment manufacturers have already started counting the money.
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