China's EV startups posted their October numbers on November 1, and the headline is simple: Leapmotor is playing a different game from everyone else. It delivered 106,127 cars, more than double Xpeng's record month. Meanwhile Huawei's HIMA alliance, the brand with the fanciest showrooms and the highest prices, fell by half.
Cheap, good-enough and exported beats premium and domestic. October made that hard to argue with.
The table
Here's the October scoreboard from the brands' own announcements, compiled by IT之家 and Sina:
| Brand | October deliveries | Year on year |
|---|---|---|
| Leapmotor | 106,127 | +51% |
| Xpeng | 50,237 | +20% (record) |
| Xiaomi | 50,000+ | n/a |
| NIO (all brands) | 34,246 | −15% |
| HIMA (Huawei alliance) | 33,537 | −51% |
| Zeekr | 32,483 | +52% |
| Li Auto | 29,025 | −9% |
BYD, the giant in the room, sold 490,200 new-energy vehicles, up 11%. Its first ten months are still slightly down, at 3.62 million (−2.2%).
Leapmotor: the boring winner
Four straight months above 100,000. Over 1.9 million cars delivered in total. Leapmotor doesn't win spec-sheet shootouts or launch-event applause; it wins on price and on having Stellantis' sales network abroad. Its joint venture, Leapmotor International, routes cars through Stellantis dealers, and the company took more than a quarter of Italy's pure-EV market in the first half, per the Beijing Daily.
Month on month, though, it grew just 0.45%. Leapmotor may be hitting a ceiling at about 106,000 a month. The next leg has to come from new models or more export markets.
Xpeng and Xiaomi both clear 50,000
Xpeng's 50,237 is its best month ever, up 22% on September. The detail that matters: 13,326 of those went overseas, up 166%. More than one in four Xpeng cars now leaves China. That's a hedge against the brutal home price war, and it's working.
Xiaomi topped 50,000 for the first time this year, on the back of the 澎程 (Pengcheng) series' first full month of deliveries. Xiaomi said the range locked more than 70,000 orders in its first 30 days. It's also offering three years of zero-interest financing on in-stock N70s in November. Strong demand doesn't usually need that kind of help, so watch whether the 50,000 holds in December.
HIMA: premium, and shrinking
HIMA, the Huawei-led brand group that includes AITO, Luxeed and Zunjie, delivered 33,537, down nearly 51% year on year. It says the average transaction price is above 400,000 yuan and it has passed 1.6 million total deliveries. Both true. Neither hides the fact that its volume halved.
Seres, which builds AITO cars, confirmed the pain from the manufacturing side: October sales of 27,037, down 50.3%. Its line now is that it won't join the price war and is taking AITO into Europe. Fine strategy for margins. Rough for the sales chart.
NIO and Li Auto: running to stand still
NIO's 34,246 is down 15% year on year. The main NIO brand held up (18,125, up 6%), Firefly grew 31% to 7,738, but Onvo halved to 8,383. NIO's year-to-date total of 334,547 is a record, up 38.5%, so this is a soft month inside a decent year, not a collapse.
Li Auto's 29,025 is down from 31,767 a year ago. The refreshed MEGA contributed about 3,000.
Our take
October's split is about price and passports. The winners either sell cars that cost less (Leapmotor, Xiaomi's new range) or sell lots of them abroad (Leapmotor via Stellantis, Xpeng at 26% overseas). The brands that are premium and mostly domestic, HIMA and Li Auto, are shrinking.
If you're tracking which Chinese EV brand you'll see on your street next year, bet on Leapmotor and Xpeng. If you're tracking who makes the money, that's a different question, and HIMA's 400,000-yuan average is its answer.