Have you ever wondered what happens when two companies team up to build electric cars, the cars keep selling, yet one partner reports a massive loss while the other keeps making money hand over fist? That’s exactly the situation with Seres (the company behind the AITO / Wenjie brand) and Huawei right now. Seres just dropped its half-year earnings warning: an expected loss of 1.5–1.8 billion RMB. Last year at the same time it made 2.94 billion RMB profit. Meanwhile, Huawei’s smart vehicle solutions business is still growing fast and collecting revenue from multiple streams with almost no inventory risk.
Let’s break this down like we’re chatting over coffee — what really caused the loss, how Huawei structured the deal so it almost always wins, and what it means when a carmaker hands over too much of its “soul.”
1. Seres’ Loss Breakdown: It’s Not Simply “Sales Collapsed”
First, clear up the biggest misconception. Seres’ cars are still selling. First-half volume was actually up a bit. The pain comes from three places: raw material costs, asset write-downs, and the removal of a big government subsidy cushion.
In Q1 Seres still showed a 754 million RMB profit — but 600 million of that came from government subsidies. These subsidies go straight into the profit line with no matching cost. Strip them out and Q1 operating profit was only around 100 million RMB, already down 74% year-on-year and barely above break-even.
For the full first half the company now expects a 1.5–1.8 billion RMB loss (or 2.2–2.5 billion RMB after removing all non-recurring subsidy income). The official reasons given are rising raw material prices and asset impairment.
Raw materials matter, but not equally. Lithium carbonate (the key battery material) really did push costs up — roughly several thousand RMB per car. Storage chips and industrial metals (copper, aluminum) added far less — maybe a few hundred to a thousand RMB per vehicle. A normal car doesn’t carry nearly as much memory as an AI server, so the chip story is mostly a distraction.
The bigger chunk is asset impairment. Companies don’t expense the full cost of machines and molds in year one; they depreciate them over several years. When technology moves fast or old tooling won’t generate future profits, management can choose to write the remaining book value down immediately and book the loss now. Many listed companies prefer to dump all the bad news into one already-ugly quarter rather than spread it out. That’s likely where a large part of Seres’ extra loss came from.
2. The Two Hidden “Cash-Flow Reservoirs” That Got Drained at the Same Time
Even before raw materials and write-downs, Seres (and many other carmakers) lost two important sources of breathing room.
One was supplier payment terms. In the past, car companies could stretch payments to suppliers for three to six months — essentially using other people’s money as free working capital. New rules now require payment within 60 days. For a company that buys a lot of parts, that sudden loss of float hurts cash flow badly.
The second was “zero-kilometer used cars.” These are brand-new vehicles that have already been registered but haven’t reached end customers yet. Dealers used to hold them in inventory or quietly export some through parallel channels. That channel has now been tightened. Previously these cars made up roughly 12% of volume; now the inventory and cash pressure lands squarely on the carmaker.
Seres also has a harder time exporting than peers like BYD or Geely. Because so many core components come from Huawei, which faces U.S. sanctions, many overseas markets are reluctant to accept the vehicles. Other “界” brands have alternative export routes through their parent groups; Seres has fewer options.
Faced with all this pressure, Seres chose to recognize as much loss as possible in this single reporting period. If sales pick up in the traditional “Golden September–Silver October” season, it can book profits later. That’s one legitimate accounting approach — but it makes the headline number look brutal.
3. Huawei’s Three “Pockets”: A Business Model Designed to Collect, Not to Risk
Huawei, on the other side of the street, structured the relationship so it has three reliable ways to take in money while bearing almost none of the inventory or market risk.
- Pocket 1 – Selling core components.
- Pocket 2 – Taking a cut of every car sold.
- Pocket 3 – Occasional big-ticket deals.
Huawei’s smart vehicle solutions revenue reached 45.018 billion RMB in 2025, up 72.1%. That figure doesn’t even include most of the store commissions or the brand/equity transactions. Crucially, Huawei never has to hold finished car inventory or worry about unsold stock.
4. Handing Over the “Soul” – What Does It Really Cost?
Seres spent years learning from Huawei and reached heights it probably couldn’t have reached alone. But the core intelligence (driving algorithms, cockpit software, key chips) now sits with the partner. Once that gap in capability and talent density opens, it becomes very hard to close. Internal teams struggle to get the same resources or priority when the “partner” is seen as the expert.
It’s a bit like the Microsoft–OpenAI relationship: Microsoft has enormous resources, yet it still finds itself largely iterating around someone else’s leading model because “we can just use OpenAI’s.” The same dynamic can appear when a carmaker treats its tech partner as the permanent “soul” of the product.
Seres is not a pure victim. Before the Huawei partnership it was a small van maker (formerly Sokon) that had already received government support but was struggling to move upmarket. The collaboration genuinely lifted it into the premium EV conversation. Now it must live with the consequences of that strategic choice.
SAIC’s former chairman once famously said he didn’t want Huawei to become the “soul” while SAIC became just the “body.” Five years later SAIC also partnered with Huawei on the Shangjie brand. The point wasn’t that Chen Hong was wrong — it was that giving away too much core control carries long-term costs.
5. Apple’s Asset-Light Model vs Huawei’s — Two Very Different Flavors
People often compare Huawei to Apple because both are relatively asset-light. The differences are telling.
Apple designs its own products, owns the brand, pays suppliers up front, holds inventory, and maintains a clear, non-competing product roadmap. Huawei goes further: it sells complete solutions to multiple competing car brands, takes a percentage of revenue regardless of the carmaker’s profit, carries almost no finished-vehicle inventory, and lets the various “界” brands sort out their own positioning.
When the market is hot, everyone grows together. When price wars and inventory pressure hit, almost all the pain lands on the carmakers. It’s closer to a hub-and-spoke model where the center collects steadily while the spokes absorb the shocks.
6. A Final Thought
The Seres–Huawei story isn’t a simple morality tale. Huawei brought real technology and market access that helped Seres grow fast. At the same time, the partnership was structured so one side bears heavy fixed costs, inventory risk, and market cyclicality while the other side enjoys multiple protected revenue streams.
For any company considering a deep “borrow the ship to sail” partnership, the lesson is clear: keep enough independent capability and bargaining power that you can still steer when the weather turns. Cooperation is powerful — but handing over the entire soul rarely ends well for the one doing the handing.
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