That’s not a typo, and it’s not a footnote. It’s the origin story of one of China’s fastest-growing automotive companies, and the starting point of a journey that took us from Li Auto’s Beijing headquarters to its Changzhou manufacturing base for an exclusive, first-hand look at how the brand builds cars, and why it’s about to matter a great deal to drivers in the Middle East.
The Idea That Started It All
Li Auto’s first-ever vehicle was a compact, single-seat car, a small, almost experimental idea compared to the flagship SUVs the brand is known for today. But the timing of what came next tells you everything about how Li Auto thinks. When China lifted its one-child policy, the company saw an opening most automakers missed: families were about to get bigger, and almost no one was building vehicles specifically designed around that shift. Li Auto committed to one mission: build “the perfect family car,” and re-engineered its entire product philosophy around it.
Eleven years later, that single decision has translated into more than 1.7 million vehicles delivered, and Li Auto now ranks as the number one Chinese luxury brand in the first half of 2026, a remarkable trajectory for a company that, by industry standards, is still young.
Inside the Headquarters
Li Auto’s Beijing headquarters doesn’t feel like a typical automotive campus. Alongside the engineering and design floors, the building houses a gym, a salon, and even outlets for KFC and Subway for staff, a small but telling detail about how the company thinks about employee experience as an extension of the “comfort-first” philosophy it builds into its cars.
It’s here that we sat down with Sebastiano Russo, Li Auto’s Chief Design Officer, who joined the brand after a long career at Audi. Russo walked us through the design language behind Li Auto’s SUV and MPV lineup, deliberately built without a single sedan in the range, explaining that every decision, from seat geometry to cabin acoustics, is filtered through one question: does this make the family’s journey better?
The Largest Li Auto Showroom in the World
From headquarters, the trip moved to Li Auto’s flagship showroom in Beijing, the brand’s largest anywhere in the world, and a physical manifesto of its family-first identity. Every detail here is deliberate: display columns are rounded to protect children, a dedicated play area keeps younger visitors occupied, and there’s even a plush toy shop inside. It’s less a car dealership and more a full lifestyle destination, reinforcing the idea that Li Auto sells an experience, not just a vehicle. We test-drove the current lineup on-site after obtaining Chinese driving permits, a rare opportunity for international press.
Inside the Factory: A Car Every Minute
The final stop was the Changzhou Base, Li Auto’s largest manufacturing facility, reached via high-speed rail from Beijing. Photography inside was restricted, but what we witnessed was striking: a production line running almost entirely on robotics, staffed by just 200 people, producing a fully built, quality-checked car every single minute. The scale of that output is hard to overstate. Li Auto has delivered over 1.7 million vehicles in just 11 years, and individual models like the L6 alone sell more than 20,000 units a month in China. It’s one of the clearest signals of how Li Auto has scaled from a startup to a major manufacturer in just over a decade, with automation and precision built in from the ground up.
Coming to the Middle East
For MENA audiences, this trip wasn’t just a look at where Li Auto has been. It was a preview of what’s coming. Li Auto is entering the Middle East in partnership with Al Fahim Group, with its flagship L9 Livis launching on September 3, followed by the L8 and L6 in December. Three models built around the same family-first philosophy we saw in Beijing, now adapted for GCC roads, GCC heat, and GCC families.
The brand that started with a single-seat experiment has become one that thinks about every seat. And soon, that thinking arrives in the region.
