In the latest twist of the electric vehicle arms race, Chinese automaker Li Auto has outshined rivals by realizing what Elon Musk, Toyota, and half of Silicon Valley apparently forgot: China is big.
“People in Iowa complain about range anxiety,” said a Li Auto engineer, “but have you ever tried to road-trip across Gansu? You need more than a Tesla battery—you need a whole second car hidden inside the first one. So we just stuck a gas generator in there. Boom. Now your car has range and the smug superiority of still being called an EV.”
Meanwhile, Tesla, fresh off a 49% sales drop in Europe, responded by releasing a new feature that lets your Model Y fart in four different accents. Elon Musk dismissed Li Auto’s success: “Range extenders are cheating. Real innovation is making customers wait three hours at a Supercharger in West Virginia, where they legally can’t even buy the car they’re charging.”
NIO, not to be left out, doubled down on its battery-swap stations, which analysts say are “basically just a drive-thru Jenga set staffed by robots.” NIO owners love the convenience: “It’s like going to Starbucks, except instead of a latte you get a slightly different battery that may or may not have been in a stranger’s car five minutes ago.”
Toyota, in its usual role as the cautious uncle at the EV barbecue, announced it would “monitor these developments closely” while quietly selling 7 trillion hybrids to people who still think plugging in a car might electrocute their dog.
And BYD, the silent juggernaut, sold 10 million cars last week and didn’t even bother tweeting about it, proving that sometimes the real flex is not caring about flexing at all.
As for Li Auto, it remains wildly profitable in China, selling SUVs with more screens than Times Square and cupholders that double as AI-powered rice cookers. Asked about plans to expand to the U.S., CEO Li Xiang shrugged: “Why bother? America is busy arguing if EVs cause communism. We’ll just keep printing money here.”