Li Auto , one of China’s biggest manufacturers of smart electric cars, has priced its second production model – the L9 sport-utility vehicle (SUV) – at 450,000 yuan (US$70,604) to 500,000 yuan. The price tag is likely to raise the competition in the mainland’s luxury car segment which is dominated by conventional marquees such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Luxury SUVs made by the big traditional carmakers are typically priced at more than 700,000 yuan. The Beijing-based electric vehicle (EV) start-up said on Wednesday that the new model, with an extended battery range, can go as far as 1,315 kilometres on a single charge. It is expected to debut on April 16, Li Auto said on the microblogging site Weibo. “Those bestselling luxury models in China will face more new rivals in the coming years as electricity-powered vehicles are well received by Chinese drivers,” said Gao Shen, an independent analyst in Shanghai. “Li Auto’s upcoming SUV, to be launched during the Covid-19 pandemic, reflects the ambitions of Chinese EV start-ups as they eye bigger market share.” The L9 SUV, fitted with a 44.5 kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery pack, has two motors – a 130 kilowatt (kW) front-drive motor and a 200kW rear-drive motor. The vehicle is at the larger end of the scale, at 5.15 metres in length, 1.98 metres wide and 1.8 metres high. Established in 2015, Li Auto, whose shares are traded in both Hong Kong and New York, has only one production model that is sold on the mainland. The Li One, a mid-size SUV using extended battery-range technology, is priced at 338,000 yuan with a driving range of 800 kilometres. First delivered to customers at the end of 2019, it is seen as a rival to Toyota’s Highlander, one of the bestselling gas-guzzling SUVs in China. Last year, Li Auto delivered 90,491 Li One vehicles to mainland customers, a jump of 177.4 per cent from 2020. Toyota delivered 107,733 Highlander cars in the same year, up 13 per cent from a year earlier. Li Auto said the battery power technology, chassis, air conditioning, and seat control system on the L9 were all developed by its own engineers. The carmaker, along with Shanghai-based NIO and Guangzhou-headquartered Xpeng, are regarded as the three Chinese rivals to global EV leader Tesla. China, the world’s largest automotive market, reported sales of three million new-energy vehicles (NEVs) – which comprise pure electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel-cell cars – in 2021, up 169 per cent on the year. Cui Dongshu, general secretary of the China Passenger Car Association, predicted in February that NEV sales on the mainland could hit 5.5 million units in 2022, up 84 per cent from last year. But a shortage of automotive chips and batteries could be a drag on the growth of Chinese EV builders. According to David Zhang, a vehicle industry researcher at North China University of Technology, battery output this year might only be enough for 4.4 million NEVs. “It is an important year for EV companies to secure a solid foothold and vie for bigger market share on the mainland,” he said. “Each player wants to lure more customers as soaring growth and expanded capacity by battery makers in the second half may ease the supply woes.” Also on Wednesday, Xpeng announced that its P7 smart sports sedan has reached the production milestone of 100,000 units, 695 days after its official launch on April 27, 2020.