Off-road has become the “ultimate testing ground” for smart driving and batteries. Why did Huawei+ Ningde Era + BAIC (01958) take the lead in submitting documents?
Off-road vehicles are undergoing a shift in identity. Off-road models, represented by square boxes, are entering the garages of more and more ordinary families from niche equipment for professional players. New users need not only hardcore off-road, but also the comfort and intelligence of urban commuting. As a result, electrification and intelligence have become a new watershed in off-road vehicle competition. The problem is that off-road is exactly the hardest part of smart driving and batteries to grasp: the plan to get through the city, once in deserts and mountain roads, you often have to start over again. Whoever can gnaw this bone off first will have the initiative to take the next stage of the off-road circuit.
At the 2026 Beijing Offroad Alashan Heroes Conference, which just ended not long ago, more than 600 Beijing off-road vehicles gathered in the Tengger Desert to perform a 100 car, 100 flag sand sea parade. Zhitong Finance noticed that among the models unveiled, the BAIC Taitan 700, which was officially launched at the end of August, is the flagship off-road model of Beijing off-road under BAIC Motor (01958). With a solid and powerful chassis structure, long-range suspension, and high torque power output, it can calmly handle tall sand beams and continuous sand slopes in real driving scenarios, and completed intensive practical testing of its “offroad+smart driving” integration capabilities.
Behind this car is the “Jinghua Era” technology alliance formed by BAIC (01958), Huawei, and Ningde Era. The three parties have formed a deep integration of the entire link from the source of R&D to manufacturing quality control and supply chain collaboration to jointly define and empower the product. When the Titan 700 was launched, the official statement about this cooperation was that each of the three parties used their strengths in their fields to break the traditional bottleneck of “hard core framework, smart brain, and strong heart” in the traditional luxury off-road industry where “performance, intelligence, and comfort are difficult to achieve”.
The “ultimate testing ground” for off-road, smart driving and batteries
A hardcore off-road vehicle is a professional model specially designed for rough roads and outdoor driving scenarios. Its technical system is built around the ability to pass through all terrain. However, in recent years, with the rapid development of new energy and intelligent technology, and consumers' expectations for off-road vehicles have changed from simple tool attributes to lifestyle, off-road vehicles are rapidly entering a new off-road era with electric drive and intelligence as the core features. Technological complexity has increased rapidly, and it is already difficult for a single car company to simultaneously improve vehicle engineering, intelligent driving, and three-electric systems.
In fact, this challenge is not unique to off-road tracks; it is a common trend throughout the new energy era. However, the complexity of the off-road scene has brought the requirements of division of labor and integration to the extreme — off-road has no high-precision map coverage, unpredictable road surface structure, unstable communication conditions, and difficult to directly adapt to general smart driving solutions; off-road scenarios also require far more battery requirements than urban commuting. The risk of chassis bumps is high, temperature spans are high, and high load conditions are frequent, and standardized battery products cannot be satisfied. The more complex the scenario, the more it tests the depth of integration. Competition on cross-country tracks is shifting from competing against who has the best bike to competing for who can turn the strongest ability in the industry chain into a string.
The BAIC Taitan 700 is a typical example for observing this integrated model. The division of labor between the three parties is clear. As an automaker, Beijing Offroad is responsible for product definition, vehicle engineering, and manufacturing quality control; Huawei provides Qiankun smart driving technology that is deeply adapted to off-road vehicle scenarios, the Ningde Era provides exclusive customized batteries, and the three parties have joined forces to establish the foundation for Chinese off-road technology.
Beijing Offroad provides a complete vehicle architecture and off-road engineering foundation. From BJ212 to BJ40, Beijing's 68 years of off-road technology accumulation and million-kilometer off-road measurement data form the “scene base” jointly developed by the three parties. As a full-scene luxury smart off-road SUV, the Taitan 700 builds a strong foundation for the vehicle through an eight-horizontal, two-vertical high-strength steel girder frame. The three locks link the smart four-wheel drive, so you can get out of trouble in an instant even when in dangerous places. The original nitrogen shock absorber supports 8-stage damping in both directions, which can quickly filter road surface bumps. It also has multiple advantages of balancing economy and city commuting, such as 220 km pure electric battery life, 1,340 km comprehensive battery life, and 1.01L ultra-low fuel consumption. It truly realizes “three uses in one vehicle, four in one”, responding to users' complex needs for urban commuting, business travel, and long-distance travel.
On this basis, the addition of Huawei has strengthened the capabilities of the core sector of intelligence. The Huawei Qiankun ADS 5 MAX, equipped with the BAIC Taitan 700, debuted off-road NOA and wilderness return functions. It has no high-precision maps or markings, and can choose its own path and break through difficult situations. It is worth mentioning that in July of this year, BAIC Motor (01958) and Huawei hope to jointly establish a “joint off-road center”, opening up a link between actual off-road measurement data, vehicle chassis technology, and Huawei's smart driving algorithm. Under data feeding in off-road scenarios, Huawei's algorithm has completed adaptation and iteration.
The Ningde Era also specially customized the battery plan according to off-road conditions. The Beiqi Taitan 700 is equipped with a Xiaoyao off-road specialty battery. The structure, protection, and temperature range have been optimized in all dimensions for off-road scenarios. It has excellent impact resistance and bottom impact resistance, and can work stably in a wide temperature range of -40℃ to 55℃.
The traditional automobile industry is a chain division of labor: car companies define products, first-level suppliers provide systems, and second-level suppliers provide parts. Each link is relatively independent, and car companies are more like a “buyer”. The “Jinghua Era” turned this chain into a network: Beijing Auto (01958) off-road scene data and engineering constraints directly became input for Huawei's algorithm training and battery customization for the Ningde Era. In other words, what BAIC Motor (01958) handed over to its partner was something more rare than a list of requirements: a cross-country “test question bank” built up over decades. No other car company can come up with this test question bank in the short term; it is also the key for the three parties to be able to deeply couple and jointly build competitive barriers.
From the verification of a car to the replication of a set of models
Judging from the initial market feedback, the first implementation results of the “Beijing-China Era” tripartite alliance received a positive response from the market. According to the data, orders for the BAIC Taitan 700 exceeded 6,859 units within 48 hours of launch, making it a high-profile new product in the 250,000 to 350,000 yuan hardcore off-road market. This set of numbers validates a judgment: as the core customer base of off-road vehicles expanded from professional players to a wider user base, their requirements for intelligence and comfort increased simultaneously, and the cooperation model of BAIC Motor (01958) and “scene definition technology” in the era of Huawei and Ningde just accurately responded to this demand.
Market data is also confirming the growth potential of off-road racing tracks. According to the “White Paper on Off-road Vehicle Market and Technology Development Trends” jointly published by China Automobile Information Technology and Tsinghua University, sales of off-road vehicles in China exceeded 1.3 million units in 2025, up 25.18% year on year, and the growth rate is significantly higher than the overall automobile market; under the impetus of electrification, plug-in hybrid models are accelerating the replacement of fuel-powered models.
The position of BAIC Motor (01958) in this transition is quite representative. In the first half of 2026, sales of core “square box” terminals increased 24% year on year. The BJ30 hit a record high in single-month sales since its launch, and the BJ40 major single products achieved leading both sales volume and growth in the professional hardcore off-road market. In terms of new products, on October 21, Beijing Kosho launched its new brand “Star Tantalum”, and the brand's first product, the BAIC Star Tantalum 5X, officially began pre-sale. Since then, Beijing Offroad has formed a dual serial layout of BAIC Taitantalum and BAIC Star Tantalum: the BAIC Taitan 700 focuses on luxury smart off-road tracks, while the BAIC Star Tantalum 5X horizontally expands the incremental market for household energy. Together with the BJ series, they form a complete product matrix from professional off-road to mainstream households.
From product matrices to technology alliances, BAIC Motor (01958)'s layout logic has clearly emerged: against the backdrop of increased competition in the industry, the differentiated capabilities built by the “Jinghua Era” technology alliance are helping BAIC (01958) consolidate and expand its competitive advantage in the structural switching window of off-road tracks.
From a broader industrial perspective, competition on general circuits has become heated, and off-road tracks require extremely high scene understanding. The engineering experience, measured data, and user perception that BAIC has accumulated over a long period of time in the off-road field itself forms a barrier that is difficult to replicate in the short term. The significance of the “Beijing-China Era” technology alliance is to allow these accumulations to form a system coupling with intelligent and three-power capabilities, thereby amplifying the single-point advantage into a system advantage.
What is more noteworthy is the expandability of this model. The BAIC Taitan 700 proved the viability of the “Jinghua Era” in flagship models, while BAIC Motor (01958)'s first global model, the BAIC Star Tantalum 5X, can also choose Huawei Qiankun Smart Driving, bringing Huawei's premium smart driving to the 150,000 yuan market. From the success of one car to the replication of a model, BAIC Motor (01958) built a path on an off-road track that is difficult for other car companies to copy in the short term. For BAIC Motor (01958), the value of this path is probably only just beginning to show.