Li Auto and XPeng are building the "future", while NIO and Leapmotor are competing for the "tomorrow".
As the old saying goes, it takes three years to enter an industry, five years to understand it, and ten years to dominate it.
As 2025 is coming to an end, if we count it up, the so - called new players in the car - making industry have already been around for over a decade, and they can hardly be called "new" anymore.
According to Tianyancha APP, NIO and XPeng are the older ones, both founded in the second half of 2014. Li Auto and Leapmotor were both founded in 2015.
In addition, more than 60 new players such as WM Motor, Hozon Auto, and Singulato Motors were founded around the same time ten years ago.
Over the past decade, after the market's winnowing process, only four new - player brands, namely NIO, XPeng, Li Auto, and Leapmotor, are still doing well.
After WM Motor entered the bankruptcy and reorganization process in 2023, the latest one to reach the end is Hozon Auto in June, which has also entered the bankruptcy and reorganization process.
But it's not over yet.
2025 is another major turning point for the new - energy vehicle market. The penetration rate of new - energy vehicles has exceeded that of fuel - powered vehicles for the first time. Now that the first half of electrification is over, the intense competition in intelligentization is coming right up.
At this new juncture, where will these four companies go in the future?
Changes and Concerns of the Four New Players
To understand the future, we must first understand the past and the present.
Looking back at 2025, new changes are also taking place within the new - player camp.
Leapmotor, which was once considered likely to go bankrupt and was a "nobody" in the mainstream narrative, has become the biggest dark horse among the new players.
In November, Leapmotor's sales reached 70,000 units, ranking first among the new players. It is also the second new - player carmaker to achieve profitability after Li Auto.
This year, it has achieved profitability for three consecutive quarters and has completed its annual sales target of 500,000 units ahead of schedule.
In a recent letter to all employees, founder Zhu Jiangming showed strong confidence. Leapmotor is no longer satisfied with the label of "new player" and aims to be on par with the world's top carmakers. It has set a goal of selling one million vehicles annually by 2026.
Interestingly, while Leapmotor has successfully made a comeback, NIO, XPeng, and Li Auto are now back on the same starting line.
In November, the sales of NIO, XPeng, and Li Auto were 36,275 units, 36,728 units, and 33,181 units respectively.
Despite being on the same starting line, some are happy while some are worried.
XPeng and NIO released their best financial reports since their establishment in the third quarter. XPeng's net loss was 380 million yuan. It's just a matter of perseverance to achieve profitability in the fourth quarter.
NIO's net loss in the third quarter narrowed to 3.48 billion yuan. Although there is still a gap to achieve profitability in the fourth quarter, at least it is moving forward.
The toughest one is Li Auto. It used to firmly hold the top position among the new players, with a net profit of 8 billion yuan last year. However, in the third quarter, it suddenly turned its profit into a loss of 624 million yuan.
This just proves the exciting moment in the Chinese auto market. You never know whether tomorrow or an accident will come first.
Leapmotor was still making losses a year ago, with its gross profit margin once as low as 1.1%. Thanks to its precise positioning as the "half - priced Li Auto", it quickly made a comeback to the first echelon.
The same goes for XPeng and NIO. They both experienced their darkest moments in 2024.
XPeng successfully broke out of the darkest moment with its MONA M03 model.
NIO was not favored at the beginning of the year. Li Bin once said that less than 1% of people believed that NIO could achieve profitability in the fourth quarter. However, thanks to the strong sales of the LeDao L90 and NIO ES8, more people are looking forward to NIO.
This is the charm of the auto market. With just one model, a company may turn from struggling on the verge of death to making a comeback.
On the other hand, it may also suffer unexpected disasters and be dragged back into the darkest moment with just one model.
A large part of the reason for Li Auto's loss is that in October 2025, due to the insufficient anti - corrosion performance of the coolant in its pure - electric MPV model Mega, which posed a safety hazard, Li Auto recalled 11,411 units of the 2024 models and set aside about 1.1 billion yuan for quality - assurance costs.
This huge expenditure directly dragged the gross profit margin down from 21.5% in the same period last year to 16.3%, becoming an important cause of the loss.
Secondly, Li Auto's logic of "refrigerator, TV, and big sofa" in its range - extended vehicles does not form a moat and is being eroded by other carmakers.
Not to mention others, NIO and Leapmotor are its main competitors.
The NIO ES8 has a huge interior space, competing with the Li Auto L8 and L9. Moreover, it is a pure - electric vehicle, which has a differentiated advantage.
Needless to say about Leapmotor. It has achieved its current position thanks to its positioning as the "half - priced Li Auto".
Li Auto is groping its way forward, while its competitors are using Li Auto as a reference.
On the other hand, as the battery range has greatly increased, the "transitional" role of range - extended vehicles is quickly coming to an end. The sales ratio of pure - electric vehicles to range - extended vehicles among the new players has completely reversed from 49:51 last year to 74:26 this year. Pure - electric vehicles have not only overtaken but also left range - extended vehicles far behind.
And Li Auto, the pioneer of range - extended vehicles, is currently in a strategic adjustment period. The sales of its L - series range - extended vehicles are declining. Now, the monthly sales of its newly launched Li Auto i8 and i6 are both around 6,000 units, which is lower than expected. It is in the painful period of transformation.
Li Xiang also reflected on this during the earnings conference and directly negated the efforts to move towards a professional - manager management system in the past three years, saying that he would return to the management system of a startup company.
Actually, Li Auto provides a reference for the new players. In today's auto market, it is not easy to stay at the top all the time.
Besides Li Auto, the other three advancing new players also have hidden concerns.
Firstly, they have one thing in common in their growth: they all adopt the strategy of "low price and high - end configuration".
For example, the pre - sale price of the Leapmotor B10 is 129,800 yuan, offering a lidar - enabled intelligent driving version that is usually only available in models priced over 200,000 yuan.
The C - series and B - series of Leapmotor implement the strategies of "half - priced Li Auto" and "half - priced Model 3" respectively, precisely targeting price - sensitive customers.
However, this highly effective price war is a double - edged sword. While it helps to increase sales, it also severely squeezes the company's profit margin.
Leapmotor achieved a profit of 150 million yuan in the first three quarters, but its net profit margin was only 0.77%, indicating that its profitability is fragile.
This model means that when the industry price war intensifies or the raw - material cost fluctuates, the company's profit will face a huge risk of being quickly eroded. If the battery cost rises or competitors further cut prices, Leapmotor's profit margin may be completely squeezed, leading to a loss.
At the same time, Leapmotor still lags behind the leading companies in intelligent driving technology. It may face more pressure in the upcoming L3 intelligent driving competition.
XPeng broke through the bottleneck of traditional Class - A cars in assisted - driving functions through the "low price + high - end intelligent configuration" combination strategy of its MONA M03 model.
However, XPeng is now overly dependent on the MONA M03, facing a serious imbalance in its sales structure. Although it is originally a high - end brand, the sales of the ten - thousand - yuan XPeng MONA M03 account for more than 40% of its total sales. In contrast, the performance of other models is mediocre, with their sales all below 16%.
This "top - light and bottom - heavy" situation will undoubtedly become a constraint on XPeng's future development.
NIO's low - price and high - end configuration is mainly reflected in its relatively aggressive price - cut strategy:
The LeDao L90 was officially launched with a price range of 265,800 - 299,800 yuan, 14,000 - 22,000 yuan lower than the pre - sale range.
The starting price of the new ES8 dropped directly from 528,000 yuan to 416,800 yuan, a reduction of more than 1.1 million yuan.
However, the hidden concern is that this "price - for - volume" strategy is a stab in the back for old customers. In August this year, some old customers angrily scolded Li Bin for five minutes, and the incident made it onto the hot - search list. They even said that "NIO's resale value is not even as good as that of the bankrupt HiPhi".
In addition, in the third quarter of 2025, the delivery volume of the LeDao brand (including models such as the L90 and L60) reached 37,656 units, exceeding that of the NIO main brand (the delivery volume of the NIO brand was 36,928 units) for the first time.
NIO, once the "benchmark for high - end pure - electric vehicles", has now been overshadowed by its cost - effective sub - brand. This "inversion" is quietly shaking its brand halo.
It can be seen that no matter how the new players are developing now, there are sorrows everywhere. The "involution - style" competition in the new - energy vehicle market is far from over. With the subsidy decline and the advancement of L3 technology in 2026, the competition will intensify further. Facing the future, what decisions will these four carmakers make?
How Will the Four New Players Make Choices Facing the Future?
With the arrival of L3, the trend of cars being defined by software is becoming more and more obvious. Cars are getting closer to becoming four - wheeled robots.
The logic of future competition may change. Now, we can still focus on "refrigerators, TVs, and big sofas". However, with the progress of intelligent driving and interactive technologies, the competition logic is showing a trend towards intelligentization.
Facing the future, the four new - player carmakers are now divided into two camps. One is the idealistic camp, including Li Auto and XPeng, which are developing embodied AI as their second growth curve;
The other is the pragmatic camp, including Leapmotor and NIO, which focus on selling cars.
It's not surprising that XPeng is involved in embodied AI. Whether it's building flying cars or going all - in on AI, XPeng has been moving in a technological direction since its establishment. Its humanoid robot walking the catwalk caused a small sensation some time ago.
The most radical one is Li Auto. Recently, Li Xiang gave the ultimate answer for Li Auto's future development: Li Auto aims to define itself as an "automobile robot" in the next decade.
In contrast, Leapmotor aims to become a world - class carmaker with an annual output of 4 million vehicles in the next decade, focusing on the automotive field.
In addition, on December 28th, Leapmotor held its 10 - year anniversary press conference and launched its first large - size SUV, the Leapmotor D19, and its first MPV, the Leapmotor D99, as its two flagship models.
The D - series is going to target the high - end market.
It can be seen that in the face of external changes, Leapmotor is still steadily expanding its product portfolio.
When Li Bin was asked about NIO's view on embodied AI, he said that NIO would be more focused. There is no doubt that robots have a future, but NIO won't get involved today. Instead of entering the market now, he is more interested in which robots will use NIO's chips.
Actually, it's quite interesting that the choices of Leapmotor and XPeng are not surprising. Leapmotor has always focused on the automotive supply chain and belongs to the pragmatic camp, while XPeng has always been full of a sense of science fiction and belongs to the idealistic camp.
What's surprising is the choices of NIO and Li Auto.
The choice of whether a company should engage in embodied AI is actually a bit similar to the choice of whether to go for pure - electric vehicles back then.
In the choice of the pure - electric vehicle route, NIO was a firm idealist, insisting on the pure - electric route, while Li Auto was a representative of pragmatism, choosing the range - extended route as a transition.
However, when facing the next big trend in automotive intelligentization - embodied AI (defining cars as four - wheeled robots), their choices have dramatically reversed: the pragmatic Li Auto now embraces the "idealism" of robots, while the former idealist NIO has become more pragmatic, focusing back on the cars themselves.
This seemingly contradictory "misalignment" actually deeply reflects the different development stages and financial situations of the two companies.
Li Bin has paid a heavy price to realize the ideal of pure - electric vehicles. NIO has accumulated losses of over 100 billion yuan.
To maintain the competitive advantage of its pure - electric vehicles over range - extended vehicles, NIO has spared no expense in building a large number of battery - swapping stations.
NIO and Li Bin have paid too much on the pure - electric vehicle route. Maybe Li Bin is tired, or maybe he has changed and become more pragmatic, so he didn't choose to develop robots.
In addition, NIO's current development situation doesn't allow Li Bin not to compromise with reality.
NIO's primary goal now is to achieve profitability. It needs to give an account to its investors over the years and also to its consumers.
Li Bin once said in an internal conversation that about 30% - 40% of potential customers don't choose NIO because they are worried that NIO will go bankrupt.
Although NIO has more than 30 billion yuan in cash on its books, consumers have seen too many new - energy carmakers go bankrupt, and the seeds of fear have been sown.
To be honest, NIO doesn't have much room for error and has to be more pragmatic.
In contrast, thanks to its previous pragmatism and the success of its range - extended strategy, Li Auto has already achieved "financial freedom", with nearly 100 billion yuan in cash flow on its books.
This gives Li Auto more room for trial - and - error and the capital for long - term planning.
Moreover, as the era of range - extended vehicles is coming to an end, Li Auto is back at a new starting point. It needs to rethink and re