Lufang Lu of Voyah Details Three Key Pain Points in the Smart EV Industry and Recent Breakthroughs

In 2026, at the High-Level Forum on Intelligent and Electric Vehicles, Lu Fang, CEO of Voyah Auto, reflected on the company’s journey since joining Dongfeng Motor Group at the end of 2018 and addressed three core challenges currently facing the industry: how centrally administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) should define “passing” benchmarks at different stages, how to rebuild user trust in intelligent driving technologies, and whether full-stack in-house R&D remains worthwhile amid rising supply chain costs. Lu proposed four criteria for evaluating “stage-specific success”: brand recognition, completeness of product portfolio, depth of technological systems, and capital market validation. To date, Voyah has established itself as a premium smart new energy vehicle brand, offering SUVs, MPVs, and sedans. Notably, the Voyah Dreamer ranked first in sales within the premium MPV segment in Q1 2026. Technologically, Voyah adheres to full-stack self-research and development, covering intelligent software as well as foundational systems such as powertrain, chassis, and body structure. On the capital front, Voyah was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on March 19, 2026, with its share price rising nearly 20% by early April. Following its IPO, Voyah faces mounting pressure to improve gross margins and achieve self-sustaining profitability. Its strategy includes internal efficiency improvements to reduce costs and enhance quality, alongside external efforts to scale up sales volume and expand distribution channels. In terms of production capacity, Dongfeng Group has allocated the Yunfeng plant’s annual capacity of 300,000 vehicles to Voyah. While collaborating with Huawei on product development and user responsiveness through an established synergy mechanism, Lu emphasized that Voyah maintains its independent corporate identity and retains full control over its brand and core technologies. Addressing the issue of users being hesitant to adopt intelligent driving features—often summarized as “daring not to use”—Lu attributed this partly to past overpromising by some companies, which created a gap between user expectations and real-world performance. Voyah has set a four-pronged goal: “dare to use, love to use, easy to use, and good to use,” placing safety as the top priority. The company has completed development of its L3 conditional automated driving vehicle architecture. The Taishan Ultra model is equipped with redundant hardware systems for braking, steering, communication, and power supply, meeting technical prerequisites for L3 deployment—but commercial rollout will await regulatory maturity. Lu also cautioned against excessive focus on individual hardware specs, such as 896-line LiDAR, arguing that holistic coordination across perception, decision-making, and execution is far more critical. He urged the industry to avoid misleading consumers. In response to cost pressures from rising prices of raw materials like memory chips, Lu predicted that overall vehicle price increases are highly likely. Voyah is countering this through a threefold approach: internal cost optimization, scaling operations to offset unit costs, and accelerating localization and domestic substitution in its supply chain. Over recent years, Voyah has already achieved domestic alternatives in high-value components including chips, air suspensions, and rear-wheel steering, laying a foundation for broader industry adoption. Lu stressed that only through deep in-house R&D can companies effectively drive domestic substitution and mitigate supply chain risks. After seven years of development, although Voyah has achieved stage-specific milestones, it still grapples with incomplete economies of scale, persistent profitability pressures, and insufficient user education around intelligent driving. Its trajectory offers a compelling case study for China’s automotive transformation: how a new brand with central SOE backing navigates the delicate balance between institutional frameworks and market dynamics to pursue both technological autonomy and commercial sustainability.