On September 1st, Li Xiang announced the company's pure electric vehicle sales targets for this year via Weibo, stating that "Li Auto i8 aims for a stable 6,000 units per month, Li Auto i6 targets a stable 9,000-10,000 units per month, and including Li Auto MEGA, the overall pure electric vehicle lineup should stabilize at 18,000-20,000 units per month." The company also aims to "secure fifth place and compete for third" in the premium pure electric vehicle segment.
This statement follows Li Auto's recently released second quarter 2025 financial results. The financial report shows that the company achieved revenue of 56.172 billion yuan in the first half of the year, down 1.99% year-over-year, while net profit reached 1.743 billion yuan, up 2.82% year-over-year.
Additionally, Li Auto expressed cautious expectations for the third quarter. The company forecasts vehicle deliveries of only 90,000 to 95,000 units in Q3, representing a significant decline of 37.8% to 41.1% year-over-year. Meanwhile, the company expects total revenue for the third quarter to drop sharply by 38.8% to 42.1% year-over-year, falling to between 24.8 billion and 26.2 billion yuan.
During the earnings conference call, Li Xiang candidly admitted that the company is in a position where it's "being chased while playing with open cards." He pointed out that Li Auto's product iteration frequency is lower than competitors, often finding themselves in a situation where "by the time we make one move, our opponents have already made two."
To address this challenge, Li Xiang stated: "Going forward, we will accelerate the pace of updates to our technology platforms and products. Based on our previous planning, the problem we're encountering now is that when we make one move, our peers make two moves. The iteration frequency is equivalent to our competitors watching our cards while playing against us. Therefore, we must accelerate the speed of technology platform and product update iterations going forward to ensure we can make moves more frequently."
From January to July 2025, Li Auto's cumulative sales totaled 234,700 units, down 2.21% year-over-year, achieving only 36.7% of the annual target of 640,000 units. Despite Li Xiang's apparent confidence, the prospects for achieving the sales targets remain unclear.