From BYD's "Blade" to Geely's "Golden Brick", from Xiaomi's "Dragon Armor" to Li Auto's self-developed 5C ultra-fast charging battery, and now to Huawei's newly unveiled "Giant Whale" battery platform—the Chinese auto market in 2026 is witnessing a lively "naming campaign" for batteries.
The battery, once the "heart of the car" quietly resting in supplier catalogs, is now solemnly named by automakers one after another, written into product manuals, and printed in the most prominent positions at new car launch events. An engineering executive from an automaker put this change bluntly: in the past, automakers "made requests" to battery manufacturers; today, automakers "set the standards".
Why, overnight, do automakers all want to hold this "heart" in their own hands? What kind of industrial logic is hidden behind this "naming campaign"?
01. The "Naming Campaign": Batteries Begin to Take the Automakers' "Surname"
Take Li Auto first. In late August, Li Auto announced at its earnings call that self-developed batteries will be gradually equipped across all vehicle models starting in the second half of the year. The trend has already materialized—the all-new Li Auto L8 launched in June was the first to use the self-developed ultra-fast charging battery, followed closely by the new-generation Li Auto L6 and Li Auto i8. The battery packs are self-developed and manufactured by Li Auto, while the cells are self-developed by Li Auto and contract-manufactured by partners; a year prior, Li Auto had already formed a battery joint venture with Sunwoda to pave the way for capacity in advance.
Then look at Huawei and Xiaomi. Huawei launched the Giant Whale battery platform, and Xiaomi officially introduced the Dragon Armor battery. Coupled with the earlier BYD "Blade" and Geely "Golden Brick", almost every mainstream Chinese automaker now has their own "battery business card".
This scene was hard to imagine three or five years ago. At that time, power batteries were just a line of parameters in the supplier catalog: automakers submitted requirements, battery factories delivered cells, and OEMs handled integration, each in their proper place. Now, power batteries are transforming from back-end components into the frontline battlefield for OEMs to compete in core capabilities.
However, Liu Kai, Executive Secretary-General of the NEV Battery Branch of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, pointed out: strictly speaking, among automakers, only BYD has truly succeeded in the path of self-developing batteries and building its own battery production capacity. This also illustrates from another perspective the immense difficulty of this path.
Knowing it is difficult, they still press on. What exactly are the automakers aiming for?
02. "Heart Anxiety": Why Must Automakers Develop Batteries In-House?
The most realistic answer is cost. Power batteries account for about 30% to 40% of the total vehicle cost, making them the most expensive "piece of meat" on a NEV. During cycles of severe lithium price fluctuations, OEMs passively bear the pressure of rising finished battery prices, and the profits of some models are directly swallowed by upstream costs—when the price of lithium carbonate skyrocketed in 2022, the market even echoed a heartbreaking remark: "Automakers are working for battery manufacturers".
The balance of profits has not yet been fully corrected. In the first half of this year, CATL's net profit exceeded CNY 43 billion, while the average profit margin of the OEM industry was only about 1.5%. Zhang Chengyun, Director of International Consulting Business at China Automotive Engineering Research Institute, sees it clearly: even by 2026, although the prices of raw materials such as lithium carbonate have significantly fallen from their peaks, the imbalance in profit distribution between the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain has not been substantially alleviated. This profit gap is prompting more and more automakers to make up their minds to develop batteries in-house.
Beyond cost, there is also the anxiety of differentiation. The industry believes that profit is only a superficial incentive; the deeper reason lies in the fact that batteries are becoming a key fortress for automakers' differentiated competition. This year, the Chinese auto market has seen a "stampede-style" launch of new models, but intelligent driving and cockpit experiences are becoming homogenized across brands. Battery performance is one of the few remaining battlegrounds for differentiation. Whoever can define the benchmarks for fast charging, safety, and cycle life will have the confidence to claim "exclusive" advantages at new car launches.
Going a layer deeper, it is about future-oriented layout. Li Xiang, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Li Auto, stated frankly at the earnings call that, in the long run, batteries and chips will become the most important technical barriers and moats in the era of embodied AI. Frontier tracks such as flying cars and embodied AI also have a strong dependence on batteries. Fully autonomous and controllable battery technology can provide underlying support for automakers to open up new businesses. In-house development is not about denying anyone else, but about keeping future core technologies in one's own hands—just as Apple and Huawei have done in the past.
03. From "Grey Box" to "White Box": The Shift of Definition Power
The "naming" is just the surface; what lies behind is the shift of definition power.
In the past, automakers purchasing batteries was a typical "grey box model": they only received product specifications and interface parameters. How the cells were designed, how materials were selected, and how the battery management system was written were all "black boxes" for the suppliers. Now, automakers are moving towards a "white box model". An industry insider described it this way: "It is not simply about obtaining the supplier's bill of materials and parameter access, but about the comprehensive penetration of automakers' standards throughout the entire chain of battery R&D and production."
The word "standards" is easy to say but hard to implement. Take Xiaomi's Dragon Armor battery as an example. The national standard requires a 30mm impactor head and an impact energy of 150 joules for the bottom impact test; Xiaomi's internal standard uses a 25mm impactor head, with the impact energy increased to 500 joules, covering more extreme working conditions. Another example is NIO's early proposal of a 15-year cycle life and a state of health not lower than 85%—these differentiated indicators are difficult to achieve through generic standardized solutions. Automakers must shift from "making requests" to "setting standards".
Li Auto, on the other hand, took a different path: forming a joint venture with Sunwoda, where Li Auto leads the material formulation and structural system at the cell level, as well as the underlying development of the entire battery pack and battery management system, while Sunwoda is mainly responsible for contract manufacturing. Liu Zhimin, Senior Director of Power Battery at Li Auto, once stated, "Li Auto takes full responsibility." To date, Li Auto has achieved complete system in-house development, including cells, battery packs, battery management systems, and thermal management, completing the last piece of the puzzle in the "three electrics" domain.
In-house development does not mean a one-size-fits-all approach. Li Xiang specifically set the tone during the call: "In-house development does not mean that the suppliers' products are not good enough. Our in-house development of the Mach chip does not affect NVIDIA still being the best chip brand in the world; our in-house development of batteries does not affect brands like CATL being the best battery brands in the world." The industrial reality behind these words is: walking on two legs with both in-house development and suppliers is becoming the mainstream.
04. A Moat Is Not Dug in a Day
A moat is never dug in a day. BYD's "Blade" has proven that the path of in-house development is feasible, but Liu Kai's reminder is equally resonant: to date, only BYD has truly succeeded in this path. Developing batteries in-house means that automakers must possess technical comprehension and quality control capabilities across the entire chain of materials, cells, modules, and battery management systems, and they must also bear the risk of trial and error in technical routes—this is an order of magnitude more difficult than "issuing a technical requirement document".
Precisely because it is difficult, this "naming campaign" is particularly thought-provoking. The signal it conveys is clear and firm: as NEV competition shifts from "competing on configurations" to "competing on core technologies", automakers are no longer satisfied with being mere "assemblers" of complete vehicles; they want to become the "definers" of core components. At the same time, supply diversification is also advancing in parallel—AITO has introduced second-tier battery suppliers such as CALB and Gotion High-Tech, and automakers like XPeng and Leapmotor are also breaking the pattern of exclusive supply. The coexistence of in-house development and diversified supply actually makes the industrial chain ecosystem richer.
For China's power battery industry, this is even more of a positive catalyst. China's battery industrial chain already stands on the global high ground. Now that automakers have stepped in to define standards, writing the real needs of complete vehicles for fast charging, safety, and lifespan directly into the "genes" of batteries, it is pushing batteries from "usable" to "highly usable". The two-way commitment between complete vehicles and batteries is making this "Chinese heart" beat more powerfully.
When batteries bear the automakers' names, the competitive poker table has already been dealt a new hand. Whoever holds the "heart" in their own hands first will have one more ounce of confidence in the next leg of the journey. The endgame of this "naming campaign" has not yet been settled, but the direction is already clear: the moat of China's NEVs is being dug from the visible exterior to the invisible core.