(Source: Li Auto)
With the release of its new model on the horizon, Chinese electric car company Li Auto seems to be thinking about how to get customers to buy the new model.
In a post on its app Friday, Li Auto said that all owners who bought a new 2020 model Li ONE will receive a 10,000 yuan ($1,550) re-purchase benefit when they trade in or purchase new vehicles from Li Auto.
This benefit can be applied directly against the price of the vehicle and is valid until June 30, 2023, Li Auto said.
The policy applies to new Li Auto products, including the 2021 Li ONE and future new products.
Li Auto said that owners and their immediate family members, including parents, children, and spouses, are eligible for this benefit for both trade-ins and additional purchases.
Li Auto will unveil the new Li ONE on May 25 at 20:00 Beijing Time at a spring launch event, which Li Auto previously said was titled "How to build a smart electric car that makes a family happier.
The new Li ONE will be priced at RMB 400,000 ($62,000), up RMB 72,000 ($11,000) from the current model, according to Yan Yupeng, a well-known car blogger and founder of xincheping.com.
Yan said in a Weibo post on Friday, "The new Li ONE is said to have improved a lot in auto-assisted driving capability, but the price jumped from RMB 328,000 to RMB 400,000, can people accept it?"
A poster posted by Li Auto on its WeChat account on Thursday showed that the new Li ONE will be equipped with the Journey 3 chip, the latest chip from local chip company Horizon Robotics.
Horizon released its in-car AI chip Journey 3 in September 2020, which uses a 16-nanometer process and is based on the BPU2.0 architecture developed by it.
With 5 TOPS of AI algorithm and typical power consumption of 2.5W, Journey 3 supports application scenarios including high-level assisted driving, intelligent cockpit, automatic parking assistance, high-level autonomous driving and crowdsourced high precision map positioning.
Li Auto currently has only one model on sale - the Li ONE, which was released in October 2018 and began deliveries in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Li Auto's upcoming release of the upgraded Li ONE is a slight facelift with optimized upgrades to the exterior, interior and features, and potentially more than 60 new and improved features.
Li Auto's new Li ONE said to cost $11,000 more than current model
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