Li Auto sees 500,000th production vehicle roll off line

Cumulative deliveries of the discontinued Li One exceed 210,000 units and cumulative deliveries of the Li L9 have exceeded 100,000 units.

(Image credit: Li Auto)

Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI) saw its 500,000th production vehicle roll off the production line, marking a milestone in its history.

Li Auto’s 500,000th production vehicle, a Li L7, rolled off the assembly line at the company’s plant in Changzhou, Jiangsu province on September 25, it announced today.

Since the first Li One rolled off the assembly line in November 2019, Li Auto has taken 47 months to achieve 500,000 mass-produced vehicles off the assembly line, making it the first new car-making force in China to reach this achievement, the company said.

From the 400,000th mass-produced vehicle off the line to the 500,000th mass-produced vehicle, Li Auto took just 100 days, it said.

Li Auto’s current models on sale include the five-seat Li L7, and the six-seat Li L8 and Li L9, which are extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs), essentially plug-in hybrids.

The company’s first production car was the Li One, also an EREV, a model that was discontinued last year.

Li Auto delivered a record 34,914 vehicles in August, bringing cumulative deliveries since inception to 465,499, data monitored by CnEVPost showed.

Cumulative deliveries of the Li One exceeded 210,000 units, and cumulative deliveries of the Li L9 have exceeded 100,000 units, Li Auto said today.

The Li L9 was launched on June 21, 2022, and is the first model in the company’s L-series. The Li L8 and Li L7 were launched on September 30, 2022, and February 8, 2023, respectively.

Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, Li Auto will challenge the monthly delivery target of 40,000 units with the L-series models, it said today.

Li Auto’s first battery electric vehicle (BEV), the Li Mega, will be launched in December and the company is confident that the model will be the number one seller priced above 500,000 Chinese yuan ($68,400), it said, repeating earlier statements.

Li Auto announced on August 25, the first day of the Chengdu auto show, that the Li Mega will be officially launched in December, with show cars available in stores in January next year and deliveries starting in February.

Li Auto is currently experiencing a capacity bottleneck, with weekly insurance registrations for the past more than 10 weeks at around 8,000 units.

In the week of September 11 to September 17, Li Auto sold a record 9,100 vehicles, it said on September 19.

To avoid the potential logistical impact of the Hangzhou Asian Games, Li Auto and its suppliers have been producing for the last two weeks with no weekend breaks, Li Xiang, the company’s founder, chairman, and CEO, said in a Weibo post on September 19, adding that the boost in weekly deliveries wasn’t an expansion of production.

Li Auto will stop production and upgrade its production lines at the end of September and during National Day holiday, all of which will be upgraded to double-shift production, he said.

The company could see more than 40,000 monthly orders this month, and the odds are that monthly deliveries will exceed 40,000 in November, Li said last week.

(1 US dollar = 7.3101 Chinese yuan)

Li Auto Aug deliveries breakdown: Li L7 at 12,752, Li L8 at 11,227