Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI) has officially launched its first electric SUV (sport utility vehicle), the Li i8, increasing its bet on a market it is not particularly familiar with and is highly competitive.
The company rolled out the Li i8 at an event held today in its headquarters city of Beijing, with a starting price of RMB 321,800 ($44,830), and deliveries set to begin on August 20.
The starting price is at least RMB 28,200, or 8.06 percent, lower than the previously announced expected price range of RMB 350,000 to RMB 400,000, a common strategy in China’s automotive industry.
This is still RMB 41,900, or 14.97 percent, higher than the pre-sales starting price of RMB 279,900 for the L90 electric SUV from Onvo, a sub-brand of Nio Inc (NYSE: NIO), one of its most direct competitors.
Onvo L90 will officially go on sale in two days on July 31, with the final starting price expected to be further reduced. Deliveries of the Onvo SUV are expected to begin on August 1.
Li Auto offers three variants of the Li i8 — Pro, Max, and Ultra — similar to its other models.
The three variants start at RMB 321,800, RMB 349,800, and RMB 369,800, respectively.
The three-row Li i8 measures 5,085 mm in length, 1,960 mm in width, and 1,740 mm in height, with a wheelbase of 3,050 mm.
For comparison, the Onvo L90 measures 5,145 mm in length, 1,998 mm in width, and 1,786 mm in height, with a wheelbase of 3,110 mm.
The Li i8 comes standard with ternary lithium-ion batteries supporting a 5C charging rate. The entry-level model features a 90.1-kWh battery pack with a CLTC range of 670 kilometers. The other two variants both use a 97.8-kWh battery pack, with a CLTC range of 720 kilometers.
To support the launch of the Li i8, Li Auto has increased its charging network construction over the past year and promised that there will be 2,500 supercharging stations when the electric SUV goes on sale. Earlier today, it announced that this number had reached 3,000.
The Li i8 comes standard with dual motors with a total power output of 400 kW and a total torque of 660 Nm. It can accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in 4.5 seconds.
Li Auto only briefly mentioned the hardware specifications of the Li i8 at today’s launch event, spending most of the time introducing the model’s smart driving capabilities and virtual voice assistant.
The Li i8 will use the latest autonomous driving architecture, MindVLA (Visual-Language-Action), which will bring more powerful smart driving capabilities.
The VLA driver large language model will be delivered with the Li i8 in August and will be available for Li Auto’s AD Max models.
The Li i8 is Li Auto’s first pure electric SUV and its second battery electric vehicle (BEV) model after the Li Mega MPV (multi-purpose vehicle).
The company’s other models are SUVs in the L series, all of which are extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs).
As a bigger bet on the BEV market, the Li i8 faces a lot of strong competition, especially from the Onvo L90 and Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), which will launch its six-seat Model Y L this fall.
In the EREV market, where it had dominated, Li Auto is also facing greater pressure, especially from Huawei-backed Aito models.
In the first six months of the year, Li Auto delivered 203,938 vehicles, representing a year-on-year increase of just 7.91 percent.
In June, the company delivered 36,279 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 24.06 percent, marking the first time in at least five years that June deliveries declined year-on-year.
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