Li Auto postpones second electric model until 2025
Founder, Chairman, and CEO Xiang Li gave two reasons for the change in timeline. Firstly, Li Auto is building its own charging network, following in Tesla’s footsteps. According to Li, the company has 404 supercharging stations with 1,770 charging stalls, but it needs to grow its charging network to a level similar to Tesla Supercharger to sell premium electric SUVs. The latter has 2,000 Supercharger outlets in China.
As the second reason, Li stated a lack of parking spots in showrooms to display vehicles. Li Auto needs 500-600 more display spots nationwide, and if it launches new models without addressing this issue, it will only increase its number of products, not sales volume, he added.
Li Auto will thus use the additional time to expand its charging network and display spots. But it will also make some changes or improve the first electric SUV. However, design revisions at this point are probably out of the question, as the company is already testing the upcoming model in the production body on the roads.
However, some changes may be necessary if the carmaker wants its electric SUV to receive a better response than its first electric vehicle. After launching in March, the Li Mega did not take off as expected. According to the Reuters report, Li Auto sold 3,000+ units of the Mega in March, less than half of the expected volume from analysts – 8,000 units.
Li Auto unveiled the Mega in November. The model is a 5.35-metre-long van with a fast-charging Qilin battery from CATL. Li Auto confidently announced that the Mega would be the best-selling model in China among all cars with a price above 500,000 yuan across all drive types. In other words, Li Auto is targeting a price segment above 63,000 euros. At the same time, the company announced that four more models would follow on the Chinese market in 2024, including three BEVs and one EREV model. It is now clear that the BEV trio will not make an appearance until next year at the earliest.
On the infrastructure side, Li Auto presented an 800-volt fast-charging station with up to 480 kW of power and its own charging network plans in April 2023. According to these plans, it would add 3,000 stations to its network in China by 2025. Each station would equipped with a super-fast 4C charging station and three regular fast-charging stations, it was stated at the time. The plan is to cover 90 per cent of China’s motorway network and major cities. However, as mentioned above, the carmaker has some catching up to do.
Li Auto has only been in business for a few years and has grown rapidly so far. The company started series production in November 2019. In addition to the Mega, the model range consists of several SUVs with five, six or seven seats, all of which still have a combustion engine – either as a hybrid or a range extender. The decision to postpone the further introduction of battery-electric models caused share prices to fall by 17 per cent on Tuesday.
