Japanese Brands Accelerate Embrace of Huawei's QianKun: China's Technology Becomes Lifeline for Joint Venture Automakers

The 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show serves as an industry barometer, gathering numerous new trends and dynamics in the automotive sector, reflecting the complex landscape of the car market in 2026. Consumers' car purchasing decisions are becoming increasingly cautious, and the market is rapidly shifting from incremental competition to stock competition. Under competitive pressure, major car companies are initiating deep strategic adjustments.

Recently, In the automotive sector, actions are continuously unfolding, with the addition of the Jing series brand. Will other automotive brands introduce new brands to expand their market share, or will they choose to reduce the number of brands and focus on core businesses amidst fierce competition? At the auto show, GAC Toyota's Platinum Zhi 7 and Dongfeng Nissan's new Teana are both equipped with the HarmonyOS cockpit, highlighting the accelerated embrace of Chinese technology by joint venture brands. Xiaomi Auto released the Xiaomi HAD Enhanced Edition, making Xiaomi another automaker to achieve end-to-end assisted driving with a world model; the Leapmotor A10 has become the world's first model under 100,000 yuan to be equipped with LiDAR, a breakthrough that may signify the accelerated popularization of advanced intelligent driving.

Reading slowly through the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show, you will discover that these diverse industry actions are outlining the core competitive dynamics of the 2026 car market—meticulous brand layout, deep integration of Chinese and foreign technologies, generational leap in assisted driving technology, and the continuous lowering of hardware thresholds are expected to become the keywords throughout the year. This article will focus on "joint venture brands embracing Chinese technology."

CNMO has noticed that, in the context of the wave of intelligence sweeping the Chinese automotive market, traditional joint venture brands are accelerating their localization transformation. At the 2025 Guangzhou Auto Show, two major Japanese joint venture brands, GAC Toyota and Dongfeng Nissan, chose to collaborate deeply with Huawei— the former launched the pure electric mid-to-large sedan, the Platinum Smart 7, which is equipped with the HarmonyOS cockpit 5.0, as well as laser radar and advanced driver assistance systems; the latter introduced the HarmonyOS cockpit in the new fuel B-class sedan, the Nissan Teana. Earlier, Dongfeng Nissan had launched the pure electric sedan Nissan N7, which is equipped with Huawei's HarmonyOS cockpit and ADS intelligent driving solution. Since its market debut in April 2025, the N7 has steadily increased its sales, with nearly 40,000 units delivered from January to October, making it a key player in its new energy lineup.

This series of actions clearly indicates that Japanese car manufacturers are shifting from "technological conservatism" to "open collaboration," attempting to bridge their gaps in electrification and intelligence by integrating China's leading local smart ecosystems.

Not only Japanese brands, but overseas brands collectively face pressure.

Japanese car manufacturers have chosen to collaborate with Huawei, primarily due to increasing market pressure and declining revenues. In recent years, Japanese brands have consistently underperformed in the Chinese market. Data shows that from January to October 2025, Honda's sales in China fell by 20.5% year-on-year, totaling only 527,700 units, with both Dongfeng Honda and GAC Honda experiencing declines of over 24%. During the same period, Nissan's cumulative sales reached 525,000 units, a year-on-year decrease of 7.5%, with its main models showing continuous sales shrinkage. In 2024, Toyota's sales in China were 1.776 million units, down 6.9% year-on-year, with GAC Toyota's decline reaching 14.5%, and only FAW Toyota barely maintaining a stable level. More alarming is the accelerated loss of market share—Japanese brands' overall market share dropped from 21.6% in 2021 to 15.8% in 2024.

The core issue behind the continuous decline in sales lies in the fact that Japanese car manufacturers have severely lagged behind the pace of the Chinese market in terms of product iteration. While Chinese domestic brands have quickly captured mainstream consumer preferences with combinations of "refrigerator, color TV, big sofa" paired with advanced intelligent driving and fast charging long-range capabilities, Japanese car companies are still overly reliant on traditional fuel vehicles. Currently, Toyota's pure electric vehicle sales account for less than 1.5%, Honda's flagship pure electric platform has been delayed until after 2026 for mass production, and although Nissan has launched electric models like the Ariya, its smart experience significantly lags behind that of local new forces. Additionally, Japanese brands have long been indecisive in their electrification strategies, neither firmly transitioning nor having a clear technological roadmap, resulting in a gradual loss of consumer confidence.

In contrast, Chinese brands such as BYD, Geely, and Changan have established a complete new energy system that covers pure electric, plug-in hybrid, and range-extended vehicles. Not only do their products have comprehensive advantages, but their usage costs are also significantly lower than traditional fuel vehicles, fundamentally shaking the core selling point of Japanese cars, which is "fuel efficiency and durability."

Certainly, it's not just Japanese brands that are facing challenges. In October 2025, German brands' retail sales in China amounted to 301,000 units, a year-on-year decrease of 13.5%, with their market share dropping to 15.6%, down 2.1 percentage points compared to the same period in 2024. Meanwhile, American brands also performed poorly— in the first four months of 2025, their overall market share had shrunk to 4.8%. Under multiple pressures, if joint venture brands like Japanese ones cannot accelerate transformation and embrace the new technological ecosystem, losing the Chinese market, one of the most important automotive arenas globally, may only be a matter of time.

Mutual benefit, but challenges remain.

Facing a continuous decline in market share, joint venture brands urgently need to transform. Although developing intelligent technology independently is an ideal path, the high cost of R&D and the long validation cycle make it difficult to achieve results in the short term. Against this backdrop, the integration model of "joint venture brands + domestic software and hardware" is becoming a pragmatic and efficient solution. With the rapid rise of Chinese intelligent technology companies like Huawei, Horizon Robotics, and Momenta, traditional car manufacturers can quickly address deficiencies in critical areas such as smart cockpits and advanced driver assistance systems through collaboration.

A typical success story is the pure electric sedan Nissan N7 launched by Dongfeng Nissan in 2025. The starting price of the vehicle is 119,900 yuan, with a body length of 4,930 mm and a wheelbase of 2,915 mm. The top configuration is equipped with a 73 kWh lithium iron phosphate battery, and it has a CLTC range of over 600 kilometers. Although it is a Japanese joint venture product, its core components are highly localized: the battery is supplied by Sunwoda, and the intelligent driving system is jointly developed with Momenta, using an end-to-end large model architecture. The Max version supports high-speed NOA navigation assistance, which can automatically complete overtaking, lane changing, and entering/exiting ramps based on navigation in high-speed scenarios, providing an experience close to that of leading new power players. Within just 50 days of its launch, the Nissan N7 had exceeded 20,000 pre-orders, fully demonstrating that Chinese consumers are willing to pay for the combination of "joint venture quality + domestic intelligence."

Similar collaborations are accelerating. Previously, GAC Toyota launched the D-class pure electric sedan, the Platinum Smart 7, setting a precedent for cross-ecosystem integration—this vehicle was developed by GAC Toyota's Chinese engineering team and for the first time integrates Huawei's HarmonyOS smart cockpit with Xiaomi's Surge.OSEco, achieving seamless coordination between two ecosystems. As the first joint venture model equipped with both Huawei and Xiaomi technologies, the Bozhi 7 not only makes breakthroughs in interactive experience but also marks the transition of traditional car manufacturers from "manufacturing-led" to "technology co-creation." As of late November 2025, its pre-orders have exceeded 5,000 units, initially validating the market acceptance of this model.

It is foreseeable that by 2026, this type of cooperation is expected to begin widespread adoption. On one hand, Chinese intelligent technology has gained wide recognition: taking Huawei as an example, its HarmonyOS cockpit and QianKun intelligent driving system have built a good reputation, with car sales equipped with QianKun technology exceeding 100,000 units as of October 2025. On the other hand, joint venture brands urgently need to empower themselves through technology to reshape product value and brand image, and regain the trust of Chinese consumers. If Volkswagen, General Motors, More international car companies will follow suit, and 2026 may become the explosive year for "domestic intelligence empowering joint-venture vehicles."

However, this cooperation model is not without challenges. First, there is still inertia in brand perception—consumers have long associated Japanese cars with being "fuel-efficient and durable," and are naturally skeptical about their intelligent capabilities. Changing this mindset requires time and continuous product validation. Secondly, the era of software-defined vehicles demands high standards for OTA iteration speed and data loop capabilities, which cannot be met by simply purchasing modules or "rebranding." Moreover, although companies like Huawei are opening up technical interfaces, this could further compress the already thin profit margins of joint venture brands.

Therefore, the key to future success or failure lies in whether joint venture brands can achieve a "deep integration" with Chinese smart technology—not just through hardware accumulation, but by forming synergy in areas such as software architecture, user experience, and data operations. Only in this way can joint venture brands truly regain their competitiveness in the wave of intelligent transformation, rather than becoming mere display platforms for technology suppliers.

In conclusion

Joint venture brands embracing the intelligent technologies of Chinese tech companies like Huawei is not only a strategic self-rescue under market pressure but also a re-recognition of the new rules of automobile consumption in China. From initial resistance and observation to active collaboration today, this shift profoundly reflects the reconstruction of the global automotive industry power structure. In the future, the core of automotive competition will no longer be engines and gearboxes, but rather the comprehensive strength of chips, algorithms, and ecosystems. For joint venture brands, whether they can abandon their technological arrogance, truly integrate into the Chinese smart automobile industry chain, and deeply participate in localized innovation will directly determine their ability to secure a place in the fierce market reshuffle after 2026.