Gasgoo Munich-Li Auto founder, chairman, and CEO Li Xiang took to Weibo on Oct. 19 to weigh in on automakers developing their own core battery technologies. Diving deep into battery R&D, he argued, serves both the industry's evolution and consumers' interests.
Drawing a parallel with the PC industry, Li recalled when crashes and blue screens were routine, devices overheated under load, and battery life fell short. Most PC makers sourced both operating systems and chips from specialized suppliers. Apple, meanwhile, was a rare holdout — building its own OS from the start and later introducing its in-house M-series chips. Once hardware and software were unified around a single architecture, Macs saw dramatic gains in fluidity, battery life, and thermal management, setting a new benchmark for the industry. At the same time, suppliers like Microsoft, Intel, and AMD kept innovating, pushing Windows PCs forward. Today, the experience on both Mac and Windows is vastly improved from the early days.
The lesson, Li suggested, is that massive industries need two legs to walk. One leg is specialized suppliers who deeply understand their products; the other is automakers who dive deep into core technologies. Only by alternating strides can the industry advance — and ultimately, it's the user who benefits. Relying on just one leg, he warned, leads to an unsustainable imbalance. Companies get trapped in scale wars, while the things users actually care about — performance, quality, safety, and longevity — stall out.
Image credit: Li Xiang's Weibo account
The auto industry is no different. The world needs battery companies that truly understand smart EVs, Li said, just as it needs smart EV makers that truly understand batteries. Li Auto set its course for in-house battery development back in 2020, aiming to drive technological progress alongside specialized partners — with the full vehicle and user demand as the starting point.
He stressed that Li Auto's battery partners remain world-class suppliers — and collaborators to this day. "What to build in-house and what to co-develop with partners are choices that shift across different stages," he noted. "The only constant is the benchmark: whichever path serves the user better."
Li also announced that Li Auto will host its Power Day tech event on Oct. 20 at 7:30 p.m., where the company will unveil its latest technological advances.
