Photo/Li Shuo (NBD)

On March 1, several new energy vehicle companies announced new car deliveries in February 2023. Despite the subsidy removal and Spring Festival holiday, sales of most new energy vehicle companies increased sequentially as expected in February.

Li Auto still maintains a strong momentum, ranking first among automotive startups in deliveries for the month. Data show that Li Auto's deliveries of new cars (Li L9 and Li L8) in February came at 16,600 units, showing an increase of 97.5% year on year. It is reported that the Li L7 will be handed back to customers at the beginning of March.

Li Auto is quite confident in its delivery performance in the following months of this year. The carmaker's CEO Li Xiang said, "We (Li Auto) aims to get a share of 20% of the luxury SUV market in the price range of 30,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan this year. We expect our delivery in the first quarter to grow 64.0% to 73.4% to be between 52,000 and 55,000 units." In 2022, Li Auto accounted for 9.5% of the above-mentioned segment market.

NIO came second in deliveries among automotive startups, reporting both year-on-year and month-on-month increase in February delivery. NIO expects its car delivery in the first quarter of 2023 to be between 31,000 and 33,000 units, showing an increase of about 20.3%~28.1% from a year ago. This means that NIO's delivery in March has to cross the 10,000-unit mark in March.

Closely following is NETA Auto. In February, NETA Auto's delivery returned to the level of 10,000, shipping 10,073 new cars in the month, up 41.5% year on year and 67.4% month on month. In February, the automaker's high-end model NETA S generated sales of 2,048 units, up 35% from the level in January and accounting for about 20% of the company's total sales for February.

Xpeng Motors came fourth in the list with delivery of 6,010 units, up 15% from the previous month and down 3.3% year on year. A person close to Xpeng Motors told National Business Daily that the new Xpeng P7 will be launched in March, and the delivery of the company is expected to rise in March.

According to its plan, Xpeng Motors will launch two new cars and retrofit three existing models in 2023, and it aims to deliver 200,000 cars throughout the year.

Leapmotor rounded out the top five with shipment of 3,198 vehicles in February, which represented a year-on-year decrease of 6.9%. But with the launch of the C11 Extended Version, 2023 C11 Pure Electric, 2023 C01, and 2023 T03 on March 1, Zhu Jiangming, chairman of LeapMotor, told National Business Daily that the delivery of the company will show an increasing trend。