Li Auto will erneut im Bereich der reinen Elektromobilität antreten. Warum folgt Li Xiang so rasch den Ratschlägen?

One day before the release of the ideal pure - electric model i8, Li Xiang, the CEO of Li Auto, opened his Douyin account, attempting to further expand the brand's influence and get closer to users in this way.

Among the 10 videos already posted on Li Xiang's Douyin account, 7 are related to the i8. Li Auto's emphasis on the i8 is reflected in many details. For example, previous press conferences usually lasted only 1 hour, but this time it lasted 2 hours. Even Li Xiang himself said that this was the largest - scale press conference Li Auto had ever held in the largest venue it had ever rented.

However, after the i8, which Li Xiang regarded as "having no rivals", was launched, it did not reproduce the sales myth of Li Auto's L - series models. The i8 Pro, Max, and Ultra versions do not come standard with a refrigerator, a large TV, and a comfortable sofa, which were the keys to the popularity of the L - series. The i8's overly avant - garde design and the starting price of 321,800 yuan also made consumers have many concerns. More than two weeks have passed since its launch, and Li Auto has not announced the order data of the i8.

After the setback of the Li Auto MEGA last year, Li Xiang reflected internally, saying that the Li Auto MEGA and high - voltage pure - electric vehicles must go through a process from 0 to 1 similar to that of the Li Auto ONE and extended - range electric vehicles. They cannot have the business momentum from 1 to 10 as soon as they are launched like the L - series. This was our miscalculation of the rhythm of the pure - electric strategy.

As the high - voltage pure - electric series of Li Auto's product family, the i - series models undertake the important task of Li Auto breaking through the imagination ceiling. At the beginning of this year, Li Auto said that the company's goal was to rank among the first echelon in the high - end pure - electric market within 3 years. At present, this goal still seems achievable, and it depends on how Li Auto plays its cards.

Second Shot in the Pure - Electric Field: Li Xiang Acts Swiftly After Taking Advice

On the morning of August 5th, news about the configuration adjustment of the Li Auto i8 spread: "There must be a big surprise", "Wait until 12 o'clock. It's going to be a bombshell, not just about benefits", "It is said that the three versions will be combined into one, the price will be adjusted, and it will be re - launched."

The starting price of the i8 is 321,800 yuan. Like the extended - range model L8, it has three versions: Pro, Max, and Ultra. However, the Pro version lacks the iconic refrigerator and cannot be optionally equipped with one. The battery supplier for the version priced over 300,000 yuan is Sunwoda instead of CATL. Almost all models priced over 300,000 yuan in the market use CATL batteries. The Max version does not come standard with a second - row screen, and the appearance, which Li Xiang described as a combination of "an off - road vehicle, a sedan, and an MPV", is also difficult for consumers to accept.

On August 4th, Sun Shaojun of "Che Fans" revealed in a live - stream that from July 28th to August 3rd, Li Auto received about 13,000 new orders last week, among which about 6,000 were firm orders for the i8. The Ultra version accounted for 70%, and the Max version accounted for 20%.

"At first glance, the configuration and price are confusing. The refrigerator, large TV, and comfortable sofa are the selling points of Li Auto, but there are three configurations. You have to choose the high - end version to get all the refrigerator, TV, and sofa," an employee who recently left Li Auto was a bit confused about this situation.

From Li Auto's perspective, taking extended - range vehicles as the benchmark for pure - electric vehicles, it seems reasonable to match the i - series with the L - series one by one. An automotive blogger said that for pure - electric vehicles with a significantly higher cost structure, having the same price as the extended - range vehicles with the same configuration is already the optimal solution in the current situation. It's not that pure - electric vehicles are not cheap enough; it's just that in the current environment, extended - range vehicles are a bit expensive. Li Auto itself is the price benchmark in the extended - range market, but now, with the market change, the benchmark line of the price benchmark has changed.

Meanwhile, when the pure - electric model i8 was released, it coincided with the release of LeDao L90, a sub - brand of NIO. The LeDao L90, also a pure - electric vehicle, has more space, comes standard with a refrigerator, a large TV, and a comfortable sofa, but its price is nearly 100,000 yuan cheaper. "The LeDao L90 was not originally in the same class as the i8, but it was forced to be compared with the i8," the above - mentioned employee said. All these have led to a decrease in the interest of many potential consumers in the i8.

At 12 noon on August 5th, Li Auto officially announced the configuration and price adjustment of the i8: it cancelled the division of Pro, Max, and Ultra, unified it into a single i8 Max configuration, and reduced the price from 349,800 yuan to 339,800 yuan. At the same time, it offered a rear - cabin entertainment screen package as an optional extra for 10,000 yuan.

Li Xiang, the CEO of Li Auto, said that this adjustment of the i8 was a "response to advice". Adjusting from 3 versions to 1 was to align with the value definition of the Li Auto ONE. "Previously, the i8 continued the version - configuration characteristics of the L8. We were stuck in inertial thinking."

A former employee of Li Auto was not surprised by this adjustment. He told Tech Planet that Li Auto's greatest advantage was its quick response.

On August 7th, Tech Planet visited the Li Auto, XPeng, and LeDao dealerships in Beijing's H Hesheng Hui. Around 5:30 p.m., within the same time period, 5 customers entered the Li Auto dealership, 6 entered the XPeng dealership, and 4 entered the LeDao dealership. Almost all customers in the XPeng dealership focused on the newly released XPeng P7, while the LeDao dealership only had the L90 and L60 models.

Maybe because it was not on a weekend, there was not much difference in the traffic among these three dealerships. Li Auto placed the i8 in a prominent position in the dealership, but not all customers who entered the store were looking at the i8. More people still focused on Li Auto's L - series products.

With Wenjie in Front and Leapmotor Behind, Is Li Auto Losing Its Home Turf?

Li Auto once defined the product form of family - use SUVs. Relying on its L - series products, it became the first company among NIO, Li Auto, and XPeng to exceed one million in sales volume.

Li Auto's good days did not last long. In September 2023, Wenjie launched the new M7. As the second vehicle jointly released by SERES and Huawei, the new Wenjie M7 directly targeted the Li Auto L7. One month after its launch, the firm orders for the M7 exceeded 60,000.

Later, SERES also launched the Wenjie M9, targeting the Li Auto L9. An employee of Li Auto told Tech Planet that Li Auto's strategy at that time was to engage in staggered competition, using the MEGA to compete with the Wenjie M9 and the L6 to compete with the Wenjie M7.

However, this competition strategy did not fully work. The overly avant - garde appearance design of the MEGA discouraged most consumers, and the public opinion caused by its appearance also brought Li Auto the biggest controversy since its establishment.

In May this year, the MEGA was upgraded. According to Li Auto's official announcement, the delivery of the Li Auto MEGA Home will start in late May, and the stable monthly delivery volume of the Li Auto MEGA is expected to reach 2,500 - 3,000 vehicles, achieving a 150% - 200% increase compared with the stable monthly delivery volume of the 2024 model.

According to SERES' official data, the delivery of the Wenjie M9 started at the end of February last year. The cumulative sales volume in 2024 was 151,000 vehicles, with an average monthly delivery of 15,000 vehicles. In the first half of 2025, the cumulative sales volume of the Wenjie M9 was 62,492 vehicles, with an average monthly delivery of 10,415 vehicles.

Obviously, the MEGA failed to successfully counter the Wenjie M9, but the Li Auto L6 is not inferior to the Wenjie M7. According to the data from the Passenger Car Association, in the first half of 2025, among the mid - large and large SUV models, Li Auto ranked first with a sales volume of 97,531 vehicles, while the Wenjie M7 ranked fifth with a sales volume of 34,064 vehicles.

Charting: Tech Planet, data source: Passenger Car Association.

On the extended - range vehicle track, Li Auto has more and more competitors. For example, the third model of Xiaomi Auto is a mid - large SUV for family users, and XPeng also has similar vehicle plans.

Li Auto's position as the sales champion is being replaced by Leapmotor, which has replicated Li Auto almost pixel by pixel. According to the data from the Passenger Car Association, Leapmotor has won the title of the new - energy vehicle sales champion for 3 consecutive months. This also means that in the extended - range vehicle field, if Li Auto wants to launch cheaper models, the competition will be extremely fierce.

The extended - range vehicle track is getting more and more crowded, which can be seen from Li Auto's sales volume. According to a report by "Yijian Auto", a media under the 21st Century Business Herald, Li Auto internally adjusted its sales target twice this year. The first time it was adjusted from 700,000 vehicles to 640,000 vehicles, and the second time, it was planned to be adjusted from 640,000 vehicles to 580,000 - 600,000 vehicles. However, the internal decision on the second - time adjustment of the specific sales target has not been made. Li Auto has not publicly responded to the adjustment of the sales target.

In July this year, Li Auto's sales volume declined year - on - year for two consecutive months, and the decline in July was even close to 40%. According to Li Auto's official data, in the first half of this year, Li Auto delivered a cumulative total of 204,000 vehicles. To achieve its sales target, Li Auto needs another hit model like the L6.

The i6 Has to Shoulder the Great Responsibility

Both NIO and XPeng have experienced troughs. Their situations at that time were no better than Li Auto's current situation, but they were still able to get out of the trough with their strong product power.

As the earliest profitable player in the new - energy vehicle industry, Li Auto has more cash than NIO and XPeng. In Q1 2025, Li Auto's short - term available funds were about 110 billion yuan. In comparison, Xiaomi Group, which consumers jokingly call the "King of Cash in Beijing", has 135 billion yuan.

This means that Li Auto still has a great deal of room for trial - and - error in the pure - electric vehicle field. The rapid adjustment of the i8 also confirms Li Auto's organizational agility.

Regarding the sales volume of the i8, Li Xiang once posted on Weibo: "You can check the data to see who is currently the number one in the sales of pure - electric SUVs with an actual price over 300,000 yuan and what their monthly sales volume is. After looking at these data, you can think about what a reasonable order volume for the Li Auto i8 should be." This seems to represent the internal sales volume expectation for the Li Auto i8.

Another sales - related data worth referring to is that on August 13th, Li Auto officially announced that by the end of September, it would ensure the delivery of more than 8,000 Li Auto i8 vehicles to users and would also aim for the delivery of 10,000 vehicles. This means that Li Auto has prepared a production capacity of at least 8,000 vehicles.

A research report from China Merchants Securities shows that it is estimated that the stable monthly sales volume of the Li Auto i8 will be between 3,000 and 5,000 vehicles. Considering that mid - large and large pure - electric SUVs only account for about 8% of the domestic new - energy vehicle market, the monthly sales volume of the Tesla Model Y Long Range, which ranks first in sales, is only 7,000 vehicles, and the second - ranked model has a monthly sales volume of 3,000 - 5,000 vehicles. If the Li Auto i8 can achieve a monthly sales volume of 3,000 - 5,000 vehicles, it will already be a good result.

This also determines that the i8 is not a volume - driving model, and the i6, which is to be released in September, has become extremely important.

Different from the i8, which targets the blue - ocean market in the 300,000 - 400,000 - yuan range, the i6 will be Li Auto's first pure - electric SUV targeting the mainstream market. Positioned as a five - seat mid - large SUV, the official said that the new vehicle has extremely spacious and class - defying space. The combination of short front and rear overhangs and a long wheelbase brings a high space - utilization rate, and at the same time, it enables the i6 to have flexible handling. Its direct competitors will be heavy - weight players such as the Tesla Model Y and the Xiaomi YU7.

"In the past, the users who were interested in Tesla and those interested in Li Auto might not have overlapped, but this time, Li Auto has to face Tesla directly," an industry insider said. On social media, many Li Auto salespeople have started to post pre - release information, claiming that the i6 is the most powerful competitor to the Model Y.

Li Auto has started to prepare for the i6's sales. According to a report by 36Kr, Li Auto announced the adjustment of the organizational structure of its sales and service system. The previous "Five - Warfare Zones" system was abolished and merged into the "Sales" department. Han Xi, the former head of the central region, was appointed as the head of the sales department, managing front - line sales. This means that sales resources will be more concentrated, and management efficiency may also be greatly improved.

Next, it all depends on the price and product power of the i6.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Tech Planet" (ID: tech618), author: Wang Lin, published by 36Kr with authorization.