Foton Unveils Its "15th Five-Year" Strategy: One Million Vehicles Targeted by 2030
On September 29, BAIC Foton officially released its "15th Five-Year" (2026–2030) strategic development plan. Positioned against the sweeping transformation of the global commercial vehicle industry and aligned with the core requirements of high-quality development in China's automotive sector, the plan clearly defines the company's vision, key operating targets and systematic implementation roadmap for the next five years, marking Foton's formal entry into a new stage of scaled leapfrog growth, green leadership, intelligentization at the forefront, and breakthroughs in globalization.
During the 15th Five-Year period, Foton will remain firmly committed to its core commercial vehicle positioning, pursuing scale-driven quality improvement and revenue-driven efficiency gains in parallel. Relying on the coordinated synergy of four core business segments — complete vehicles, intelligent driving and unmanned equipment, core components, and the automotive aftermarket — the company will continuously optimize its industrial structure, tackle core technologies and refine its industrial ecosystem, comprehensively strengthening its competitiveness and overall profitability. Foton has set a clear strategic target of selling one million complete vehicles in 2030, advancing steadily toward its vision of becoming a world-class commercial vehicle enterprise.
The successful achievement of the one-million-unit target hinges on the sustained, in-depth advancement of three core strategic transformations: full-scale internationalization, full-scale new energy transition, and full-scale intelligentization. For the new development cycle, Foton will build on its existing technological accumulation, market results and industrial footprint, continuously iterating and deepening these three strategies to move its development model into a new configuration of mature systems and leadership across all domains.
Full-Scale Internationalization: Deepening the Global Footprint to Open New Space for Scale Growth
Internationalization is the core battleground for Foton's future incremental growth, the inevitable choice on its path to becoming a world-class commercial vehicle enterprise, and a key vehicle for extending China's commercial vehicle industrial capabilities worldwide. After years of systematic investment, Foton's overseas operating system, product portfolio and channel service capabilities have been continuously strengthened, with its export scale remaining at the forefront 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 the industry in export growth. To date, cumulative overseas sales have surpassed 1.39 million units, with products and services covering more than 140 countries and regions, and export volume ranking first in China's commercial vehicle industry for 15 consecutive years — a solid foundation for the deepened internationalization of the 15th Five-Year period.
Over the next five years, Foton will continue to upgrade its internationalization strategy, achieving a full transition from traditional "product export" to a high-quality leap of "system export, smart-manufacturing export and brand export." The company will maintain its differentiated market approach of "consolidating the base while breaking into the high end": deepening traditional strength markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, strengthening localized channel, service and parts systems to secure its installed base, while concentrating premium resources on high-end markets in Europe, Australia and New Zealand — continuously raising its international brand voice and high-end market influence through high-quality products, standardized services and full-lifecycle operating solutions.
At the same time, Foton will fully roll out a multi-brand synergistic model of "Foton + Forland + Cavan" in overseas markets to further unlock global incremental demand, while replicating its mature domestic industrial ecosystem to build an integrated overseas operating system of "product + service + ecosystem." It will complete full-chain capabilities covering used-vehicle circulation, localized energy replenishment, centralized parts procurement, connected-vehicle operations and maintenance, and financial services, realizing "global footprint, local service, full-domain empowerment" and providing a firm guarantee for the strategic target of 400,000 overseas units and a 40% sales share in 2030.
Full-Scale New Energy Transition: Diversified Technology Iteration to Lead Green Industry Development
The new energy transition is the defining trend of the global automotive industry's transformation. For Foton, full-scale new energy development is both the core growth engine of its transformation and upgrade and the green passport to world-class status. After years of high-intensity R&D investment and large-scale commercial deployment, Foton's new energy business has achieved the critical breakthrough of commercial volume ramp-up, with growth momentum continuously released. New energy sales have shown steady year-to-date growth in 2026, rising 50% year on year in August. Full-scenario new energy products are widely applied in core segments such as urban distribution, trunk-line logistics, ports and mining areas, and municipal sanitation, while the export growth rate of overseas new energy models has remained above the 60% high ground, delivering fully realized green transformation results.
For the new cycle, Foton will continue to honor its green development responsibilities, using full-scale new energy transition as the core lever to lead the commercial vehicle industry's low-carbon transformation, green upgrading and sustainable development. The company will persist with a diversified technology path running battery-electric, hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell in parallel, building a new energy product matrix that is fully covering, full-scenario and full-spectrum to precisely match different transport duty cycles. Battery-electric products will focus on urban logistics, short-haul shuttle and municipal operations, with continuous optimization of range, charging efficiency and vehicle reliability; hybrid products will be precisely tailored to long-haul trunk lines, complex road conditions and heavy-load transport, achieving the optimal balance between power performance and fuel economy; hydrogen fuel cell products will follow the national hydrogen strategy, with greater investment in core technology breakthroughs and industrialization, focusing on 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 self-developed AIKE three-electric technology platform to keep pushing into battery, e-drive, electronic control and hydrogen fuel cell components, while establishing a dedicated industrial base for new energy components. It will steadily raise the in-house rate of key modules such as battery packs, electric drive axles and vehicle control units, building a new energy supply chain that is independently controllable, secure, stable and cost-leading. The company will also extend its green service ecosystem by deploying intelligent replenishment and smart microgrid-linked systems, and building a full-lifecycle service system covering "vehicle purchase, use, energy replenishment, maintenance and residual value management" to comprehensively improve customer operating experience and cost efficiency — fully supporting the strategic target of 500,000 new energy units and a 50% sales share in 2030 and consolidating its benchmark position in the industry's green transition.
Full-Scale Intelligentization: Deepening Digital-Intelligent Value Innovation to Build a Core Technology Moat
Intelligentization is the key foundation of Foton's long-term core competitiveness and the underlying support and core differentiator for high-quality development and world-class ambition. Over the past three years, Foton's intelligent strategy has been solidly executed with a dense pipeline of technology results: the company has completed full-chain deployment across intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, steer-by-wire chassis and enterprise digitalization, and launched "Cangqiong" — an intelligent brand built on the industry's first AI large model for commercial vehicles — achieving an integrated in-house breakthrough in driving and cockpit intelligence and laying a firm technological foundation for the leapfrog intelligent development of the 15th Five-Year period.
In the new stage, Foton will use full-scale intelligentization as its strategic breakthrough, continuously advancing the digital and intelligent upgrade of the entire value chain across products, manufacturing, services and management. In intelligent driving, the company will stay scenario-oriented, deploying in tiers and scaling to volume: it will keep advancing full-stack in-house development of L2–L3 intelligent driving algorithms, achieve mass installation of highway navigation assist, intelligent obstacle avoidance and adaptive cruise control, and deliver full coverage of core commercial scenarios such as long-haul trunk-line logistics and urban distribution. In parallel, in closed and geofenced scenarios such as ports and terminals, mining areas and industrial parks, and last-mile logistics, Foton will continue to break through L4 high-level autonomous driving technology, iterating unmanned tractor, unmanned sanitation, unmanned delivery and smart shuttle solutions, expanding the scope of commercial demonstration operations, and striving for the full commercialization of L4 intelligent driving technology by 2030.
In the intelligent cockpit, Foton will continue upgrading to a new generation of highly integrated electronic and electrical architecture, optimizing core functions such as human-machine interaction, intelligent connectivity, remote control and intelligent diagnostics, and supporting rapid OTA iteration and personalized customization of vehicle features to comprehensively enhance the user's intelligent experience. On the enterprise intelligence side, Foton is applying AI across the full value chain — building smart production lines, intelligent logistics systems, and intelligent marketing and service platforms to enable precise R&D iteration, lean and efficient manufacturing, targeted marketing and rapid service response. By mining the value of connected-vehicle big data and integrating core information on vehicle operation, duty-cycle requirements and market dynamics, the company is iteratively developing digital service products such as fleet management, energy consumption analysis and safety risk control to help customers operate leanly and cut costs, driving the shift from traditional "selling products" to a high-value "product + data + service" model and continuously thickening profitability and competitive barriers.
The release of this 15th Five-Year strategic plan is a comprehensive, strategic deployment by Foton grounded in the trends of industrial transformation and anchored to long-term high-quality development. Over the next five years, the company will keep its sights set on the goal of becoming a world-class commercial vehicle enterprise, continue deepening the execution of its three core strategies, and unwaveringly advance technological innovation, industrial upgrading and global expansion — going all out for the 2030 target of one million units, and 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.