They were last pictured together on June 6, 2020, when Nio, Xpeng, and Li Auto were all struggling to boost sales.
The post Nio, Xpeng, Li Auto CEOs pose for rare photo amid intensifying competition among China's EV trio appeared first on CnEVPost.
For more articles, please visit CnEVPost.
Li Auto finished the first half of the year with more than 130,000 units sold and does not have any ability to sell 400,000 vehicles for the full year, its CEO said.
(Image credit: CnEVPost)
Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI) CEO denied that the company raised its sales target to 400,000 units this year, after the reports sparked widespread discussion.
"A media report today that our target for this year has been adjusted to 400,000 units is false and unfounded," Li Auto founder, chairman and CEO Li Xiang said on Weibo today.
Li Auto finished the first half of the year with more than 130,000 units sold and does not have any ability to make the full year sales of 400,000 units, he said.
The company's capabilities, including product, sales, capacity and organization, cannot support 400,000 units sold this year, and the gap is huge, Li said.
"The automotive industry's capability chain is built one step at a time, with no particular shortcuts," he added.
In a report yesterday, local media outlet 36kr cited sources familiar with the matter as saying that Li Auto recently raised its full-year sales target to 400,000 units from the original 300,000.
In addition to the overall sales target, Li also set targets for sales of specific models, according to the report.
Li set a goal for the Li L7 to achieve 20,000 deliveries of a single model in October, and to keep deliveries of the more expensive Li L9 and Li L8 above 10,000 units, bringing overall deliveries to 40,000 units/month, the report said.
Earlier today, Li Auto said on Weibo that it had sold 27,300 units this month as of June 25 and was on track to reach its 30,000-unit monthly sales goal.
Assuming Li Auto sells 30,000 vehicles in June, the 400,000-unit full-year sales target means it will need to sell an average of about 44,000 units per month in the second half of the year.
On June 18, Li said on Weibo that most members of Li Auto's management team thought the company should set an annual sales target of 360,000 units at the beginning of the year, but he ultimately decided to set a budget target based on annual sales of 306,000 units.
"This was partly because I didn't think we could be too optimistic about the economic environment this year, and partly because we didn't meet our budget targets for all three years from 2020-2022," he said at the time.
Li said the too-low targets he set led the company to place orders at suppliers at the beginning of the year that were clearly not keeping up with current sales, so several key components would take more than a quarter to reach the right capacity if production ramp-up began now.
Separately, Li said in another Weibo today that the Li L7 is on track to deliver more than 13,000 units this month, although it faces an onslaught of new models in June including IM Motors' LS7, Nio's new ES6.
Sales of the Li L8 have risen from more than 7,000 last month to more than 9,000 this month, and the Li L9 has improved from slightly more than 6,000 last month to more than 8,000, he said.
In addition to deliveries that can exceed 30,000, Li Auto has seen record order in-takes, Li said, adding that capacity has become the biggest bottleneck in deliveries, not demand.
All three of Li Auto's SUVs currently on sale are extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs), which are essentially plug-in hybrids.
In retweeting Li Auto's Weibo today about last week's sales figures, Li hinted that the company could launch sedan models next.
The focus is generally on the sedan lineup as dealers of luxury brand fuel cars struggle to meet their first-half sales targets this week, so sedan sales for t first-tier luxury brands are very solid, he said.
"So, the question is, shall we launch sedan offerings?" He asked.
China NEV insurance registrations for week ending Jun 25: Tesla 16,700, Li Auto 7,500, Nio 3,200
The post Li Auto CEO denies raising sales target for this year to 400,000 units appeared first on CnEVPost.
For more articles, please visit CnEVPost.
Li Auto aims to reach annual sales of 1.6 million vehicles and annual revenue of RMB 500 billion by 2025, its CEO said.
The CEO of Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI) welcomed the clarification of China's new energy vehicle (NEV) purchase tax exemption policy for the next few years and reiterated the company's ambitious goals.
Li Auto aims to reach annual sales of 1.6 million vehicles and annual revenue of RMB 500 billion ($70 billion) by 2025, Li Xiang, the company's founder, chairman and CEO, wrote on Weibo today.
China has provided stable policies for the next four years, which is great and gives Li Auto's team no excuse not to accomplish its strategic goals for 2025, Li said.
By early 2026, Li Auto's ability to meet that goal will be verified, he said.
Li Auto originally set that aggressive goal in February 2021, saying the company aims to be the No. 1 smart electric vehicle company in China with a 20 percent market share, or 1.6 million units sold annually, by 2025.
For reference, BYD sold 1,804,624 retail units in China for the full year last year, ranking first with an 8.8 percent share, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
Li Auto delivered 133,246 vehicles last year, up 47.25 percent year-on-year, but did not make the CPCA's top-selling automaker ranking.
All three models currently sold by Li Auto are extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs), which are essentially plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) that are still equipped with internal combustion engines.
Recently, there has been some concern that China may be scaling back support for PHEVs in order to accelerate the auto industry's transition to battery electric vehicles (BEVs).
Earlier today, China's Ministry of Finance released details of the policy to extend the purchase tax exemption for NEVs, with equal treatment for BEVs, PHEVs, EREVs, and fuel cell vehicles.
The country exempts NEVs with a purchase date between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2025 from vehicle purchase tax, the tax exemption will not exceed RMB 30,000 per new energy passenger vehicle.
For NEVs with a purchase date between January 1, 2026 and December 31, 2027, the vehicle purchase tax will be levied at half the normal rate, with the tax reduction not exceeding RMB 15,000 per new energy passenger vehicle.
To achieve its 2025 target, Li Auto announced two months ago its plan to launch new models in the next two years.
On the first day of the Shanghai auto show on April 18, Li Auto unveiled its all-electric solution, based on the 800 V high-voltage platform, capable of giving a BEV a 400 km range on a 10-minute charge.
With the launch of the solution, Li Auto officially enters a phase of parallel development of its EREV and BEV product lines, it said at the time.
By 2025, Li Auto's product array will include one super flagship model, five EREVs, and five BEVs, the company said.
By then, Li Auto's models for the market priced above RMB 200,000 will fully meet the needs of family users, it said.
($1 = RMB 7.1945)
Li Auto Family Tech Day: 1st BEV named Li MEGA, aims to be top seller above $70,000 in China
The post Li Auto CEO reaffirms goal of reaching 1.6 million annual sales by 2025 appeared first on CnEVPost.
For more articles, please visit CnEVPost.
The Li L7 is a model that was nearly canceled during development, according to Li Auto CEO Li Xiang.
(Image credit: CnEVPost)
The Li L7 -- a new model that almost got canceled -- saw its highest single-day sales ever on Saturday, according to Li Xiang, founder, chairman and CEO of Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI).
"Yesterday was our first tech day, and today is also a historic moment -- the first time that the Li L7 has sold more than 1,000 units on a single day with no new model launch," Li wrote on Weibo late at night on June 18.
Li Auto held its first Family Tech Day event on June 17, announcing the official name of its first BEV, Li MEGA, and the company's progress in developing assisted driving and supercharging capabilities.
"For a model with a starting price of RMB 300,000 ($42,100) or more and in a steady state of sales, selling more than 1,000 in a single day should be a moment to remember," Li said.
Li Auto launched the Li L7, its first five-seat SUV, on February 8 and currently offers three versions with starting prices of RMB 319,800, RMB 339,800 and RMB 379,800, respectively.
All of the company's current models are extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs), with the other two being the higher-priced, six-seat Li L8 and Li L9.
The Li L7 was almost canceled during development, according to Li, who said he was quite determined to axe the model last September, but several other executives stopped him.
Li mentioned in another Weibo yesterday that most members of Li Auto's management team thought the company should set an annual sales target of 360,000 units at the beginning of the year, but he ultimately decided to set a budget target based on annual sales of 306,000 units.
"This was partly because I didn't think we could be too optimistic about the economic environment this year, and partly because we didn't meet our budget targets for all three years from 2020-2022," he said.
Li said the too-low targets he set caused the company to place orders at suppliers at the beginning of the year that were clearly not keeping up with current sales, so several key components would take more than a quarter to reach the right capacity if production ramp-up began now.
Currently, Li Auto's plant in Changzhou, Jiangsu province has two production lines, one for double-shift production and one for single-shift production, according to Li.
The current peak capacity of the plant is 7,500 units/week, of which six days are production time and one day is used for maintenance, Li said.
Li Auto's goals set at the beginning of the year were too conservative, and suppliers of key components are currently adding equipment in line with the company's demand of more than 10,000 units/week, according to Li.
Li said Li Auto won't be able to achieve 10,000 units/week capacity until the fourth quarter when both of its lines will be based on double-shift production.
Li Auto delivered a record 28,277 vehicles in May, up 145.97 percent year-on-year and 10.11 percent from April, the third consecutive month to exceed the 20,000-unit mark, according to data released June 1.
The Li L7 achieved its second consecutive month of over 10,000 deliveries in May, Li Auto said at the time, without disclosing specific figures.
Li Auto aims for the Li L7, Li L8 and Li L9 models to see combined monthly sales of more than 40,000 units this year, Li said on June 1.
($1 = RMB 7.1266)
Li Auto Family Tech Day: 1st BEV named Li MEGA, aims to be top seller above $70,000 in China
The post Li L7 sees single-day sales of over 1,000 units, says Li Auto CEO appeared first on CnEVPost.
For more articles, please visit CnEVPost.
Li Auto CEO looks down on local peers, arguing that their sales are so low that they don't deserve to be taken seriously.
Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI), the buzzy Chinese car-making startup, has set an ambitious goal -- to outsell German luxury brands in 2024.
"With the delivery of the all-electric model and next year's Li L6, we are confident that we will surpass BBA in our total sales in 2024," the company said on Weibo yesterday while sharing insurance registration figures for last week.
"BBA" in China refers to German luxury brands Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi, and Li Auto appears to be aiming to outsell one of those three brands in China next year, though it didn't specify.
For reference, BMW Brilliance, BMW's joint venture in China, had retail sales of 653,976 units in 2022, essentially unchanged from 651,236 units in 2021 and ranked 14th in the China Passenger Car Association's (CPCA) top 15 sales ranking.
BYD and FAW-Volkswagen are the top two in the ranking, with 1,804,624 and 1,779,077 units sold in 2022, respectively. Mercedes-Benz and Audi did not make the list.
From January to May this year, BMW Brilliance's retail sales were 274,763 units, up 9.1 percent from 251,880 units in the same period last year, placing it at No. 9 in the CPCA's latest top 10 sales ranking. Mercedes-Benz and Audi are still not on the list.
Li Auto yesterday shared vehicle insurance registration figures showing it sold 8,400 vehicles in the week of June 5 to June 11, bringing the cumulative sales so far this month to 11,900.
As of June 11, Li Auto had sold more SUVs than any of the "BBA" brands in China this month with just three SUVs, it said.
All of Li Auto's models currently on sale are extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs), essentially plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs), including the five-seat Li L7 and the six-seat Li L9 and Li L8.
The company is expected to launch its first all-electric model by the end of the year, which will be an MPV (multi-purpose vehicle, or van) powered by the latest Qilin Battery from Chinese power cell giant CATL.
On September 22, 2022, in a warm-up for the Li L8's launch in a few days, Li Auto said it will also launch the Li L6, a midsize five-seat SUV priced within RMB 300,000 yuan ($41,850).
As it eats into the German luxury carmaker's market, Li Auto is continuing to learn from the strengths of these established luxury brands.
"In the offensive ground game, the role models are of course the BBA, which are the best sellers in the market priced at RMB 300,000 and up. we learned from them how to open 4S stores, how to choose locations, and reduce customer acquisition costs to 1/5 of stores located in malls," Li Auto founder, chairman and CEO Li Xiang said on Weibo yesterday.
Li Auto also learned from these German luxury car companies how to operate in Shanghai, which does not offer free NEV license plates for EREVs, and boosted the company's sales in Shanghai to a peak in 2022 in one month's time, he said.
Before this year, Shanghai offered free license plates to consumers who bought NEVs, including battery electric vehicles (BEVs) as well as PHEVs.
Starting this year, only consumers who purchase BEVs will receive free license plates in Shanghai, while PHEVs, including EREVs, will not be eligible for the benefit.
In Li Auto's view, its only competitors are German luxury car companies, and local brands are not worth mentioning.
After the company shared its insurance figures for last week yesterday, it was accused by a Weibo user of the move as a continued attack on its local peers.
In response to the Weibo user, Li said that the sales of these local peers are so low that they are not worth mentioning, and that its core focus has always been on the market where BBA is located.
Li used the Chinese saying "three watermelons and two dates (仨瓜俩枣)" to describe the sales of its local counterparts, implying that they were too far behind Li Auto.
Li Auto's two main peers, NIO (NYSE: NIO) and XPeng (NYSE: XPEV), both registered around 1,500 units of insurance last week, with 2,800 and 2,200 units from June 1 to June 11, respectively.
It is worth noting that both NIO and XPeng currently offer only BEVs, a fast-growing but currently small market in China.
In January-May, China's passenger vehicle retail sales were 7.63 million units, with NEVs contributing 2.42 million units, or 31.7 percent, according to the CPCA's figures.
BEVs sold 1.64 million units from January to May, contributing 21.5 percent of all passenger car sales.
($1 = RMB 7.1681)
The post Li Auto says confident it will outsell German luxury brands in China in 2024 appeared first on CnEVPost.
For more articles, please visit CnEVPost.
Li Auto CEO said they have been complained about by many of their peers, so they are temporarily unable to publish insurance data from last week.
(Image credit: CnEVPost)
Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI) continued to share weekly auto insurance registration numbers in China after they became unavailable on major channels starting in April.
Now the automaker has stopped sharing those numbers as well, and its founder, chairman and CEO Li Xiang explained why.
"We have been complained and reported by many peers, so we can't release the insurance registration data for the time being since last week, very unfortunate," Li wrote on Weibo today.
Notably, earlier today, multiple versions of a table purportedly showing the insurance registration data for the first week of May circulated on Chinese social media, with Li claiming that much of the data was fake.
"I saw that some of my peers couldn't stand the fact that some people started faking the insurance registration data (which every car company buys) and took it upon themselves to release the real data for the first week," he said.
Li Auto's insurance was not less than 6,000 in that falsified data, but 7,000, he said.
Previously, we had access to those numbers every Tuesday, and it was Li Auto's practice to share a portion of them later to show off that it was leading the pack among new car makers.
The company last shared those numbers on May 5, when it provided a table showing that it sold 8,100 units in the week of April 24 to April 30.
Li Auto delivered 25,681 vehicles in April, another monthly high, while surpassing the 20,000-delivery mark for the second consecutive month.
On May 10, Li Auto reported its first-quarter earnings with guidance that second-quarter vehicle deliveries would range from 76,000 to 81,000.
This means that it expects to deliver a total of 50,319 to 55,319 vehicles in May and June.
Insurance registrations for week ending Apr 30: Tesla 11,500, Li Auto 8,100, NIO 2,600
The post Li Auto stops sharing weekly sales data, CEO explains why appeared first on CnEVPost.
For more articles, please visit CnEVPost.
The years 2023-2025 for China's smart EV market will be like the last three years of World War II in history from 1943-1945, said Li Xiang.
Li Xiang, founder, chairman and CEO of Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI), predicted a month ago that China's new energy vehicle (NEV) penetration rate would reach 70 percent by the fourth quarter of 2025.
Now, perhaps fueled by optimism from the Shanghai auto show, he's making an even bolder prediction.
By December 2025, NEVs will account for more than 80 percent of all new vehicle sales in China, Li said in his WeChat status today, adding that the five permanent NEV brands will be born by then.
The years 2023-2025 for China's smart EV market will be like the last three years of World War II in history from 1943-1945, Li said.
Notably, this comes just a month after Li last made a bold prediction.
On March 25, Li said on Weibo that NEVs will contribute 70 percent of new car sales in China by the fourth quarter of 2025.
It's crossing the chasm theory that growth starts to accelerate when a new thing accounts for more than 30 percent, he said.
For the full year 2022, retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles in China were 5.67 million units, up 90 percent year-on-year, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
Retail sales of all passenger vehicles in China in 2022 were 20.54 million units, up 1.9 percent year-on-year. This represents a 27.6 percent penetration rate of new energy passenger vehicles in China in 2022.
In March, retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles in China were 543,000 units, contributing 34.2 percent of all passenger vehicle sales of 1,587,000 units.
In the past few years, annual passenger car sales in China have remained at about 20 million units per year, or about 1.67 million units per month.
If Li's latest forecast turns out to be accurate, it would mean that by December 2025, China's monthly NEV sales will exceed 1.3 million units.
Li Auto is one of the most successful EV startups in China, currently offering three models -- Li L7, Li L8 and Li L9 -- all extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs).
The company delivered 20,823 vehicles in March, the second time since last December that it has exceeded 20,000 units.
Li Auto delivered 52,584 vehicles in the first quarter, up 65.8 percent year-on-year and up 13.53 percent from the fourth quarter of last year.
On April 18, Li Auto officially unveiled its all-electric solution based on the 800 V high-voltage platform, capable of giving a battery electric vehicle (BEV) a 400 km range on a 10-minute charge.
With the release of this solution, Li Auto will officially enter a phase of parallel development of its EREV and BEV product lines. By 2025, Li Auto's product array will include one super flagship model, five EREVs, and five BEVs, it said.
By that time, Li Auto's models for the market priced above RMB 200,000 will fully meet the needs of family users, the company said.
Li Auto could reach 40,000 monthly sales in 2023, exec hints
The post Li Auto CEO predicts China NEV penetration to exceed 80% by Dec 2025 appeared first on CnEVPost.
For more articles, please visit CnEVPost.
In January and February, insurance registrations for passenger cars in China were down more than 25 percent from a year earlier, Li Auto CEO said, citing insurance registration data.
The post Lithium carbonate prices to fall sharply as demand far below expectations, Li Auto CEO says appeared first on CnEVPost.
For more articles, please visit CnEVPost.
If electric cars can be sold to consumers without batteries, the cost can be lower than fuel cars, said Li Xiang.
The post Li Auto CEO says battery swap model promising in cost reduction appeared first on CnEVPost.
For more articles, please visit CnEVPost.