Li Auto Unveils Lianshan EV Tech, Offers Lifetime Compensation for Battery Fires

Under the battery self-ignition guarantee, if a quality-related fire reaches the total-loss standard, Li Auto will compensate with a new car of the same configuration. Under the collision no-fire guarantee, if a collision or chassis scrape causes a fire and the vehicle is totaled, Li Auto will cover the difference between the insured amount in the car damage policy and the insurer's actual payout.

Li Xiang said the company must become a smart electric vehicle maker that best understands batteries. He said the decision to develop batteries in-house was made in 2020. Ma Donghui, co-founder, president and chief engineer, and heads of battery, electric drive and charging network technology presented materials, algorithms, chips and manufacturing details.

The new L8 extended-range model will use Li Auto's self-developed 5C ternary lithium battery with 430 km of CLTC electric range. The 2026 Li i6, scheduled for launch on Oct. 28, will reach up to 780 km CLTC, 8% more than the 2025 model. Li Auto said its new 5C LFP cell has 2.6% higher energy density than a 2C cell. A redesigned pack adds room for about 7.4 kWh, the company said.

Software updates include an ATR adaptive trajectory-library reconstruction algorithm that keeps state-of-charge estimation error within 3%, and an APC power adaptive algorithm that raises winter peak power by more than 40% without hardware changes. Reusing battery waste heat for cabin heating helps add 30 km of equivalent winter range, according to Li Auto. The company said its self-developed silicon carbide power chips have accumulated 4 million installations with zero failures.

Li Auto listed six safety defenses for the Lianshan battery: protection against impact, water, leakage and thermal diffusion, manufacturing quality control and operational risk warnings. In an equivalent 500-joule bottom impact test, the pack did not catch fire or explode and met IPX8 and IPX9K water-resistance ratings, the company said. It said a single-cell thermal failure at 50°C did not cause pack fire for 24 hours. Manufacturing uses 9,960 quality control points, and each cell has an electronic record traceable for up to 20 years. Cloud warnings can flag some potential risks 72 hours ahead, according to the company. Li Auto said 2026 models with its self-developed 5C battery should retain more than 75% battery health after eight years or 160,000 km.

On electric drive, Li Auto said its CAR119 cast-aluminum rotor material raises mechanical strength by 21% and conductivity by more than 8%. The new auxiliary drive motor adds more than 15 km of city range and 8 km of highway range for the new L9 and L8. A distributed terminal-free direct connection design adds about 30 km of range and frees 24 mm of vehicle height, according to the company. It said the drive unit failure rate has improved 5.7 times since mass production and that it uses operating data from 230,000 vehicles to identify faults.

Li Auto said it has built 4,200 supercharging stations and more than 23,000 piles, covering 25 national expressway trunk lines and 138 long-distance charging scenic routes. It plans to average one station every 100 km on national expressways by the end of this year and to increase 5C supercharging guns to 8,300 before the 2027 Spring Festival. The equipment starts charging in as little as 13 seconds, has availability above 99.9%, and more than 99.8% of sites offer free parking during charging, the company said.

Li Auto said cells are developed in-house and contract-manufactured, LFP battery packs are self-made, power chips are designed by Li Auto and made by foundries, and some power modules and drive units are built in its own plants. In September, it announced a plan to inject 2.65 billion yuan into Sunwoda Power and said it maintains long-term cooperation with battery suppliers including CATL. Ma Donghui previously told media that the comprehensive cost of self-developed batteries may not be lower than buying them.

Li Auto also linked the strategy to quality traceability. It said deep involvement in core components helps connect raw material batches, cell production steps, pack testing, vehicle operation and charging records for fault tracing and risk prediction. In October 2025, Li Auto recalled 11,411 2024 MEGA vehicles because insufficient coolant anti-corrosion performance created a thermal runaway risk under certain conditions.