BAIC Foton Unveils Its "15th Five-Year" Strategy: One Million Units in Sales by 2030
On September 29, BAIC Foton officially released its "15th Five-Year" strategic development plan. Built on the broad trends of iteration and transformation in the global commercial vehicle industry and closely aligned with the core requirements of high-quality development in China's automotive sector, the plan clearly defines the company's vision, core business objectives and systematic implementation path for the next five years. It marks Foton's formal entry into a new stage characterized by a leap in scale, leadership in green transformation, a leading position in intelligent technology, and breakthroughs in globalization.
During the 15th Five-Year period, Foton will remain firmly committed to its core commercial vehicle business, pursuing volume growth and quality improvement alongside revenue growth and efficiency gains in equal measure. Leveraging the coordinated operation of four core businesses — complete vehicles, intelligent driving and unmanned equipment, core components, and the automotive aftermarket — the company will continue to optimize its industrial structure, tackle core technologies and refine its industrial ecosystem, comprehensively strengthening its competitiveness and overall profitability. Foton has set a clear core strategic target of 1 million complete vehicles sold by 2030, steadily advancing toward its vision of becoming a world-class commercial vehicle enterprise.
Achieving the one-million-unit target hinges on the sustained, in-depth advancement of three core strategic transformations: full internationalization, full new energy and full intelligentization. Across the new development cycle, Foton will build on its existing technological accumulation, market results and industrial footprint to continuously upgrade and deepen these three strategies, moving its development model toward a new configuration in which the system is fully formed and the company leads across the board.
Full Internationalization: Deepening Global Footprint, Opening New Space for Scale Growth
Internationalization is the core arena for Foton's future incremental growth, an inevitable choice in its pursuit of world-class status, and a key vehicle for extending China's commercial vehicle industrial advantages to the world stage. After years of systematic development, Foton's overseas operating system, product portfolio and channel service capabilities have been continuously refined, with its export scale firmly positioned at the front of the industry. In January–August 2026, overseas sales reached nearly 150,000 units, up 44.3% year on year, with core categories such as heavy trucks leading industry export growth. To date, the company's cumulative overseas sales have exceeded 1.39 million units, with products and services covering more than 140 countries and regions, and export volumes ranking first in China's commercial vehicle industry for 15 consecutive years — a solid foundation for the deep international expansion of the 15th Five-Year period.
During the plan period, Foton will continue to deepen and upgrade its internationalization strategy, achieving a complete, high-quality transition from traditional "product export" to "system export, smart-manufacturing export and brand export." The company maintains a differentiated market approach of "consolidating the base while breaking into the high end": it will deepen traditional strength markets in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, strengthening localized channel, service and parts systems to secure its installed base; at the same time it will concentrate premium resources on high-end markets in Europe and Australia/New Zealand, continuously raising its international brand voice and high-end market influence through high-quality products, standardized services and full-lifecycle operating solutions.
Foton will also roll out a multi-brand synergistic development model — "Foton + Forland + Cavan" — across overseas markets to further activate global incremental demand. In parallel, it will replicate its mature domestic industrial ecosystem to build an integrated overseas operating system of "products + services + ecosystem," completing full-chain capabilities in used-vehicle circulation, localized energy replenishment, centralized parts procurement, telematics operation and maintenance, and financial services. The goal is "global footprint, local service, full-domain empowerment," providing firm assurance for the strategic target of 400,000 overseas units in 2030, representing 40% of total sales.
Full New Energy: Multi-Path Technology Iteration, Leading Green Industrial Development
New energy transformation is the central trend of the global automotive industry's evolution, the core growth engine of Foton's transformation and upgrading, and the green development passport for its world-class ambitions. After years of intensive R&D investment and large-scale market implementation, Foton's new energy business has achieved the critical breakthrough of commercial volume ramp-up, with growth momentum continuously released. Since 2026, new energy sales have maintained steady growth overall, rising 50% year on year in August. Full-scenario new energy products are widely applied in core segments such as urban delivery, trunk-line logistics, ports and mining areas, and municipal sanitation, while overseas exports of new energy models have sustained growth above 60% — the green transformation results are landing across the board.
For the new cycle, Foton will continue to honor its green development responsibility, taking full new energy transformation as its core lever and leading the commercial vehicle industry's low-carbon transition, green upgrading and sustainable development. The company will persist with a multi-path technology strategy running battery-electric, hybrid and hydrogen fuel in parallel, building a new energy product matrix that is fully covering, full-scenario and full-spectrum, precisely matched to different operating conditions. Battery-electric products will focus on urban logistics, short-haul shuttle and municipal duty applications, continuously optimizing range, charging efficiency and overall vehicle reliability. Hybrid products will be tuned for long-haul trunk lines, complex road conditions and heavy-load transport, achieving the optimal balance between power performance and fuel economy. Hydrogen fuel products will follow the national hydrogen energy strategy, with continued investment in core technology breakthroughs and industrialization, prioritizing high-end categories such as hydrogen heavy trucks and hydrogen coaches to seize the industry's technological high ground.
On core capability building, Foton relies on its proprietary AIYIKE three-electric technology platform to keep attacking key areas including batteries, electric drive, electronic control and hydrogen-fuel core components. It is establishing a dedicated new energy components industrial base and steadily raising in-house production rates for core modules such as battery packs, electric drive axles and vehicle control units, building a new energy supply chain that is independently controllable, safe, stable and cost-leading. At the same time, the company is extending its green service ecosystem with intelligent replenishment and smart micro-grid coordination systems, creating a full-lifecycle service system covering "vehicle purchase, vehicle use, energy replenishment, maintenance and residual value management" to improve customer operating experience and cost efficiency across the board — fully supporting the strategic target of 500,000 new energy units in 2030, representing 50% of total sales, and consolidating its benchmark position in the industry's green transition.
Full Intelligentization: Deepening Digital-Intelligent Value Innovation, Building a Core Technology Moat
Intelligentization is the key foundation of Foton's long-term core competitiveness, and full intelligentization is the underlying support and core differentiating advantage for achieving high-quality development and world-class status. Over the past three years, the company's intelligent strategy has been solidly implemented with technology results delivered in rapid succession. Foton has completed its full-chain layout across intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, steer-by-wire chassis and enterprise digital intelligence, and launched "Cangqiong" — an intelligent brand built on the industry's first commercial vehicle AI large model — achieving an integrated in-house breakthrough in both driving intelligence and cockpit intelligence and laying a firm technological base for a leapfrog advance in the 15th Five-Year period.
In this new stage, Foton will take full intelligentization as its strategic breakthrough, continuously driving the digital and intelligent upgrade of the entire value chain across products, manufacturing, services and management. In intelligent driving, it will adhere to scenario orientation, tiered deployment and volume ramp-up, pressing ahead with full-stack in-house development of L2–L3 intelligent driving algorithms and scaled vehicle installation of functions such as highway navigation on autopilot, intelligent obstacle avoidance and adaptive cruise control, covering core commercial scenarios including long-haul trunk logistics and urban delivery. In closed and geofenced scenarios such as ports and terminals, mining parks and industrial campuses, and last-mile logistics, the company will continue to advance L4 high-level autonomous driving, iterating unmanned tractors, unmanned sanitation vehicles, unmanned delivery and intelligent shuttle solutions, and expanding the scope of commercial demonstration operations — targeting full commercialization of L4 intelligent driving technology by 2030.
On the intelligent cockpit side, Foton is upgrading a new generation of highly integrated electronic/electrical architecture, optimizing core functions such as human-machine interaction, intelligent connectivity, remote control and intelligent diagnostics, and supporting rapid OTA iteration and personalization of vehicle features to elevate the user's intelligent experience. On the enterprise intelligence side, the company applies AI across the full value chain — building intelligent production lines, smart logistics systems, intelligent marketing and intelligent service platforms — to achieve precise R&D iteration, lean and efficient manufacturing, precise marketing reach and rapid service response. By mining the value of connected-vehicle big data and integrating core data on vehicle operation, duty-cycle requirements and market dynamics, Foton iteratively develops digital service products such as fleet management, energy consumption analysis and safety risk control, helping customers run lean operations and cut costs. This drives the company's model shift from traditional "selling products" to the high-value model of "products + data + services," steadily deepening profitability and building core barriers to entry.
The release of the 15th Five-Year strategic plan is a comprehensive, strategic deployment that anchors Foton to the momentum of industrial transformation and to long-term high-quality development. Over the next five years, the company will stay fixed on its goal of becoming a world-class commercial vehicle enterprise, continue to deepen implementation of the three core strategies, and advance technological innovation, industrial upgrading and global expansion with resolve. Foton will sprint toward its one-million-unit target for 2030, using the results of its own high-quality development to help China's commercial vehicle industry climb toward the high end of the global value chain.