The tides of history never cease, and the cyclical rise and fall of industries repeat themselves time and again. For China's forklift manufacturing industry today, it stands at a crossroads of fierce competition and profound transformation, comparable to the Warring States period. An individual, a company, or even an entire industry can only reach the shores of a new continent full of hope by navigating the vast ocean with unwavering determination and constant adjustments, like a courageous navigator, avoiding the danger of being swallowed up by surging technological changes and a red ocean market.
At this moment, the dawn of the AI ??era has pierced the ceiling of traditional manufacturing. It is time to raise the sails of intelligence and embark on a new voyage concerning survival and glory.
2025 will be a historic watershed year for the global forklift industry. On one hand, there are enticing growth figures: the global forklift market size is projected to reach $155 billion by 2030, and global forklift shipments are expected to exceed 3.6 million units by 2034; international authoritative institutions predict that from 2025 to 2030, the global forklift market will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.7%. On the other hand, however, lies a harsh reality: China's forklift industry is generally mired in a quagmire of "increased volume but not increased profits." Even industry leaders like Heli and Hangcha face domestic sales adjustments in 2025.
This is the current dilemma facing the forklift manufacturing industry. The old era's dividends are fading, and the tide of the new era has already crashed ashore. Should they cling to familiar territory, fighting to the last drop of blood in an increasingly fierce price war? Or should they bravely set sail, venturing into the "uncharted territory" defined by artificial intelligence (AI), seeking a new continent for the future? The answer is self-evident. History tells us that only "pioneers" and "innovators" can survive and thrive in the process of industrial transformation. Hesitation and observation, in the AI ??era of accelerated technological innovation, are a more deadly poison than any business risk.
I. In-depth Analysis of the Predicament: A Warning Amidst the Prosperity of Today's Forklift Industry The booming data cannot conceal the structural fragility and the predicament of the business model. We clearly see six core hidden dangers lurking beneath the surface of the current prosperity of China's forklift industry, which together constitute the shackles hindering the industry's high-quality development.
1. Increased Volume Without Increased Profit: The Industry Struggles to Achieve High-Quality Development. Market demand objectively exists. Annual data for Chinese industrial vehicles shows that in 2025, the number of forklifts sold exceeded 1.45 million units, a 12.9% increase compared to 1.285 million units in 2024. Domestic sales remained stable at 900,000 units (906,800 units in 2025), and the global market also continued to grow. However, the industry generally faces the challenge of "increased volume but decreased profits." Behind this is the continuous squeeze on profit margins from the escalating "price war" and the dual pressure of continuously rising costs.
The root causes are:
• High product homogenization: Basic vehicle technologies are maturing, resulting in low product differentiation and a singular competitive dimension.
• Cost-driven competition: When product value is difficult to differentiate, competition inevitably devolves into a cost war.
• Channel involution and model dilemma: From sales to leasing, various traditional models have been tried, but they are generally trapped in a cycle of "growth without revenue increase," with both manufacturers and distributors facing declining profitability.
• Challenges of the AI ??era: The demand for logistics automation is exploding, with customers shifting from "buying equipment" to "buying automation solutions." Traditional single-manufacturing models cannot match the new market demands.
This widespread dilemma of "increased volume without increased profit" has become a core bottleneck for the industry's transition from scale expansion to high-quality development.
2. Disordered channel system, from symbiosis to internal friction. The forklift industry's marketing model has evolved from primary agents to secondary and tertiary distributors, from traditional brick-and-mortar stores to e-commerce, from online promotion to live-streaming sales, and from buying and selling to leasing. In recent years, to compete for existing market share, the traditional "factory-agent cooperation" model has been continuously broken down, channels have been flattened, and manufacturers have even resorted to direct sales. On the surface, this reflects manufacturers' pursuit of market control and profits; in reality, it represents a depletion of innovative business models. When all models have been tried, but the results fall short of expectations, manufacturers and agents are ultimately trapped in a prisoner's dilemma where both sides suffer losses.
3. The traditional leasing model has failed, leaving no one unscathed in the "arena." Forklift leasing, once seen as a revolutionary "second battlefield" for absorbing production capacity and connecting after-sales services, has now degenerated from a blue ocean into a blood-red "arena" with thin profit margins. The core dilemma lies in the fact that market growth has not translated into substantial profits for leasing companies; instead, fierce price wars have led to a vicious cycle of "increased volume but not increased profits," or even widespread losses. This marks a shift in the forklift industry, from a golden age of incremental growth to a highly homogenized competition focused on existing market share after decades of development.
4. High Product Homogenization and Stagnant Category Innovation. Over the past decade, the traditional forklift industry has experienced a hardware-driven period, transitioning from internal combustion to electric vehicles and from lead-acid to lithium-ion batteries. Since the revolutionary Category III electric pedestrian walkie-talkie truck ignited the market around 2010 and became a pillar of industry sales, the industry has failed to produce another strategic blockbuster product that defines entirely new application scenarios. The core form, functional definition, and application paradigm of products have become largely fixed and highly similar. The traditional forklift industry is inevitably sliding from "selling products" to an era of "product wholesale." With technological convergence and similar designs, the value of the hardware itself is being rapidly diluted, and brand premium is weakening.
5. Growth Path Dependence and Imbalance in Quality and Structure. Industry growth is heavily reliant on a single overseas market. While many companies are engaged in "involution" domestically, they are also turning their attention to the European and American markets. This is certainly an important direction, but it also harbors risks: when the global trade environment fluctuates, a single overseas growth engine could suddenly stall. More importantly, from manufacturers to distributors, growth generally relies on scale expansion rather than high-quality, endogenous innovation and service value-added. Simply pursuing "bigger and stronger" may be a dangerous illusion in the intelligent era.
6. Talent and knowledge systems face a "generational gap." This is perhaps the most fundamental of all the hidden dangers. The industry is undergoing a revolutionary transformation from a research and development system centered on "mechanical and electrical R&D" to a new R&D system centered on artificial intelligence, software algorithms, and data science. The forklift industry, deeply rooted in traditional engine, hydraulic system, and mechanical and electrical technologies, is facing the challenge of core technology reconstruction in its transformation towards intelligence and AI. Companies lacking corresponding AI software and hardware R&D, marketing, and project sales teams, and lacking strategic vision and understanding, may miss out on the entire era.
II. Looking Back: From the Success of the "Second Curve" to the Confusion of the "Third Curve" History is a mirror illuminating the future. Looking back at the development of China's forklift industry over the past two decades, its successes and current confusion offer us profound insights. The First Curve: The Era of Internal Combustion Forklifts. The period from 2000 to 2010 was a "golden decade" of rapid development for China's manufacturing industry. Internal combustion forklifts, as the main equipment, experienced explosive growth alongside the expansion of infrastructure, real estate, and heavy industry. Their success was based on large-scale manufacturing, cost control, and a strong distribution channel. However, this decade also laid the groundwork for subsequent homogeneous competition.
The Leap from the First Curve to the Second Curve: Electrification and Lithium-ion Batteries. The industry successfully pioneered two "second curves": around 2010, the trend towards electrification began to emerge. While internal combustion forklifts remained popular, lightweight electric pedestrian-operated warehouse vehicles began to appear. Around 2016, the lithium-ion battery revolution deepened. The maturity of lithium battery technology and the decrease in cost led to a "leapfrog improvement in user experience."
The common thread in these two successes is that they were both based on hardware innovations in "power" and "energy," representing an evolution of the forklift's "body," and posing a relatively manageable challenge to a company's core capabilities.
However, since 2020, the industry seems to have entered a period of uncertainty regarding its "third curve." Every viable model has been tried: online, offline, leasing, direct sales, large car manufacturers making smaller cars, and smaller car manufacturers making larger cars… but with minimal results. The fundamental reason is that the next revolution will no longer be merely an evolution of the "body" (hardware), but a revolution of the "brain" (intelligence and software), accompanied by a complete reconstruction of the "soul" (business model).
As current market trends reveal, the future of the forklift industry lies in intelligentization, with the core product form being "unmanned forklifts" or "AI-powered forklifts." This is no longer a simple innovation in "tonnage" or "power," but a transformation from a "tool" to a "systemic intelligent agent." This transformation presents a comprehensive "revolutionary challenge" for traditional forklift companies, encompassing their knowledge systems, R&D models, sales models, organizational culture, and business logic. This explains why, after 2020, the industry failed to naturally generate a "new engine" to lead the next decade, as it had in the past.
III. AI + Forklifts: Defining the Future, Not Just Replacing the Present
We must understand a trend: one day, forklifts will be fully AI-powered or unmanned-perhaps in ten years, perhaps twenty. Before that day arrives, what should forklift manufacturers do? All directions point to one answer: the intelligent evolution of forklifts in the AI ??era. The core product form should not be narrowly understood as "unmanned forklifts" (AGV/AMR), but rather a more precise product with greater strategic market value. AI Forklifts – A Class of Forklifts.
AI forklifts represent an "intelligent evolution of traditional forklifts." They are not entirely new species, but rather an "evolutionary form" that uses traditional manual forklifts as its hardware foundation and integrates technologies such as artificial intelligence and vehicle networking. Their core definition is: retaining the core operating mode of manual driving, possessing the ability for independent, unmanned operation, achieving safe obstacle avoidance, assisted positioning, and data collection through AI algorithms, and enabling information management, fault warnings, and remote diagnostics through vehicle networking – a new generation of forklifts.
The core of AI forklifts lies in their precise positioning within a "market gap." They cleverly carve out a huge "middle ground" market between traditional forklifts and unmanned forklifts:
• Compared to traditional forklifts: They solve the pain points of low efficiency, high safety accidents, and reliance on experience for management.
• Compared to unmanned forklifts: They avoid the disadvantages of unmanned forklifts, such as high requirements for the operating environment, large initial investment, and complex system adaptation. They require no site modification and no integration with complex WMS/WCS systems, making them ready to use immediately.
It can be predicted that AI forklifts are not a temporary replacement, but rather will become the future market trend. "Mainstream Category." AI forklifts create a huge incremental market, rather than replacing the existing stock of traditional forklifts.
Why is it so important to focus on AI forklifts? Because it is the core bridge for traditional forklift companies to "smoothly transition" to the intelligent era; it is the intelligent path with the lowest cost, least resistance, and most direct customer conversion. It can fully leverage the existing advantages of traditional forklift companies: highly overlapping customers, strong hardware R&D and manufacturing capabilities, and extensive channel network coverage. Starting with AI forklifts, companies can accumulate software capabilities, understand intelligent scenarios, cultivate new teams, and ultimately naturally evolve to unmanned forklifts and even intelligent robots, completing the company's upgrade.
IV. Breaking Through the Bottleneck: A Seven-Step Approach from "Selling Standalone Units" to "Manufacturing the Future"
Faced with the tide of the times and a clear path, traditional forklift manufacturers... No more hesitation. The key to breaking the deadlock lies in a complete self-revolution, from strategy to execution. This can be divided into a "Seven-Step Breakthrough Method":
Step One: Strategic Upgrading, Redrawing the "Three-Tier" Business Map. Companies must move beyond the single-minded focus on "equipment wholesale" and make AI forklift growth the core of their "engine strategy." Learn from leading companies and restructure the business portfolio:
1. Solidify the traditional forklift sales and service foundation in the core business;
2. Fully develop AI forklift product lines and solutions in growth businesses;
3. Proactively deploy future business models in emerging sectors such as RaaS (Robots as a Service, such as leasing, subscription, hosting, pay-as-you-go), digital twins, and supply chain data services.
Step Two: Organizational Restructuring, Building an Independent "AI Special Forces." AI Forklift Development The success of this business requires a completely different organizational and cultural environment. The weaknesses of traditional enterprises must be overcome:
1. Establish an independent structure, break down barriers, and set up an independent business unit;
2. Attract talent and build a high-level team. The old team cannot support the development of the new business; it is necessary to recruit AI algorithm, software development, and professional marketing talent;
3. Cooperate and acquire companies to quickly fill gaps. The case of Hangcha acquiring Guozhi Robotics can be used as a reference to acquire mature technology through strategic mergers and acquisitions.
The third step: Product positioning, defining the "first or only" new category of AI forklifts. Clear "category innovation" is necessary, not simply "category extension." The product positioning of AI forklifts should revolve around "four-dimensional differentiation":
1. Initial form factor: lightweight and modular, with potential for product extension later;
2. Initial scenario positioning: focusing on specific scenarios. 1. **Standardized and replicable small and medium-sized warehouses and manufacturing workshops:**
2. **Functional positioning:** Adopting a "basic function standard configuration + advanced function subscription model";
3. **Technical positioning:** Prioritizing stability and ensuring sufficiency.
Fourth Step: Model Innovation – Building a three-dimensional profit flywheel of "hardware + service + data." The business model of AI forklifts needs to transcend traditional one-time sales and shift towards continuous value co-creation.
1. **Hardware as the entry point:** Adopting a stable pricing strategy;
2. **Leveraging the channel and network advantages of forklift companies:** Building convenience and full lifecycle service as core competitiveness;
3. **Providing operational efficiency benchmarking and optimization suggestions through data value-added services;
4. **Introducing flexible leasing solutions:** Using smart leasing to meet temporary and seasonal needs, achieving on-demand billing.
Fifth Step: **Channel Empowerment:** Transforming conflict into "new ecosystem" collaboration. Traditional channels are not a burden, but a valuable strategic asset. The key to breaking the deadlock lies in "empowering rather than replacing, and symbiosis rather than internal friction":
1. Leverage and transform existing channels: Prioritize recommending AI forklifts to existing customers using existing customer relationships.
2. Training and incubation: Help traditional dealers upgrade to "selling scenario solutions".
3. Build ecosystem partnerships: Collaborate with system integrators who have deep expertise in specific industries.
Step Six: Technological Foundation Building, Focusing on the Dual Barriers of "Hard Technology" and "Soft Power". Technological innovation is the foundation of long-term competitiveness. Forklift companies' technology strategies should focus on two points:
1. Cultivating "soft power": Mastering core technologies such as AI safety obstacle avoidance algorithms and vehicle networking platforms.
2. Embracing "large models": Proactively focusing on the integration of AI large models and "embodied intelligence", allowing AI forklifts to evolve from "execution units" into "autonomous intelligent agents".
Step Seven: Global Vision, Promoting "Intelligentization + Branding" Overseas Expansion. The overseas market remains vast, but it can no longer be entered simply through a low-price "product export" model. Future overseas expansion strategies:
1. Develop a comprehensive export model combining "intelligent solutions + AI technology + global brand."
2. Adopt a "strategic alliance" approach, forming "industry chain alliances" with domestic system integrators and software companies to provide higher-value services to the global market with a holistic approach encompassing "AI forklifts + intelligent warehousing solutions."
V. Looking to the Future: Towards a New Era of "Digital and Intelligent Mobility"
Looking back from the starting point of 2026, the future landscape of the forklift industry is becoming increasingly clear. It is no longer merely a simple narrative about equipment sales growth, but a profound transformation driven by artificial intelligence technology and a restructuring of business models. Here are some perspectives on the future landscape:
1. Those Who Elevate Their Dimensions Will Win: Reconstructing Core Competitiveness
In the AI ??era, the forklift industry can only break through the current limitations by breaking with traditional thinking and achieving a triple upgrade in cognition, industry focus, and capabilities. The future of traditional forklift manufacturers lies not in "making forklifts better," but in "redefining forklifts with AI and reconstructing profit models with services." Only by responding to the changes of the times with an upgraded mindset can they gain the initiative in global market competition.
2. The Repositioning and Evolution of Forklift Companies
The role of forklift companies in the AI ??era will undergo a leap from "equipment manufacturer" to "intelligent material handling solution provider." In the short term, the positioning will be "an enabler and bridge for intelligent upgrades"; in the medium term, it will evolve into "an integrator and operator of scenario solutions"; and in the long term, the goal is to become "an indispensable ecological partner in the intelligent supply chain." Humanity is always swept along by the times. The greatest risk in the AI ??wave is not the rapid pace of change in the world, but rather the slow pace of corporate thinking and action. If companies cling to old course maps, hesitating and wavering in familiar harbors, their ultimate fate will be either to disappear into the depths of change or to be ruthlessly swept away by fierce competition, becoming nothing more than a shadow in the past.
For China's forklift manufacturing industry, the past successes gained through hardware transformation-the "second curve"-are insufficient to meet the challenges of the "third curve," which centers on intelligence and software. Only by decisively abandoning the attachment to old models and seizing the AI ??era as a strategic opportunity, resolutely promoting a comprehensive upgrade of organization, products, models, and ecosystem, can they avoid becoming passive recipients in this magnificent industrial intelligent revolution and instead become proactive shapers and leaders of the intelligent ecosystem.
