One Car to Win It All: The 'Hit Product' Strategy Behind the Li ONE
Key Takeaways
- Focusing all company resources on a single 'hit product' for a well-defined niche can be more effective than diversifying too early.
- Deeply understanding and catering to the needs of a single user persona can lead to a product with a much stronger market fit.
- Operational simplicity, born from a one-product focus, can create huge advantages in manufacturing, supply chain, and cost control.
Prologue: The User Persona
In the early days of Li Auto, Li Xiang had a picture in his head. It was a picture of his target customer, a persona he described with incredible detail to his team. "Our user," he would say, "is a 35-year-old man. He is a father. He lives in a second- or third-tier city. He is a successful professional. This is probably his second car. He needs a car that is a 'mobile home,' a comfortable space for his wife, his child, and his parents."
This was not just a marketing exercise. This user persona, the "modern Chinese dad," was the North Star for every decision the company made. While competitors were chasing a broad, ill-defined market of "EV buyers," Li Xiang was building a car for one specific person. He believed that the only way to win in the brutally competitive auto market was to create a "hit product"—a single, perfect solution for a clearly defined group of people.
Act I: The 'Mobile Home' on Wheels
Every feature of the Li ONE, which began production in late 2019, was designed with this "dad" persona in mind.
The car was a large SUV with three rows of seating, providing ample space for six or seven people, a common configuration for family outings in China that include grandparents. The interior was designed for comfort and practicality, with luxurious materials, multiple screens for passenger entertainment, and even a "boss button" that allowed the driver to move the front passenger seat forward to create more room for an elderly parent in the back.
The controversial EREV powertrain was the ultimate feature for this user. It gave him the smooth, quiet ride of an EV for his daily commute, but it eliminated the range anxiety that would have been a deal-breaker for long family trips.
Even the business model was simplified. The Li ONE was sold in a single, fully-loaded configuration. There were no confusing trim levels or option packages. The only choice the customer had to make was the color. This simplified the manufacturing process, reduced costs, and, most importantly, made the buying process easy and transparent for the consumer.
Act II: The Power of Focus
For the first three years of its sales operations, from 2019 to 2022, Li Auto sold only this one car. This singular focus was a radical departure from the traditional auto industry, where companies typically offer a wide portfolio of models to cater to different tastes and price points.
Li Xiang's strategy was a massive gamble. If the Li ONE failed, the entire company would fail with it. But the strategy also conferred enormous advantages.
All of the company's R&D, manufacturing, and marketing resources were concentrated on making a single product as good as it could possibly be. The supply chain was simpler. The production line was more efficient. The sales staff only had to learn one product. This relentless focus allowed a young startup to compete on a level playing field with established giants.
The market's reaction was phenomenal. The "modern Chinese dad" that Li Xiang had envisioned proved to be a massive and lucrative market segment. The Li ONE consistently topped the sales charts for large SUVs in China, out-selling not just other EV startups, but also popular gasoline-powered models from global brands like Volkswagen and Toyota.
Epilogue: A New Formula for Success
The triumph of the Li ONE vindicated Li Xiang's "hit product" philosophy. He had proven that in the modern auto industry, a deep understanding of a niche user group could be more powerful than a massive marketing budget or a sprawling model lineup.
The success of this strategy became a new formula for the company. As Li Auto finally began to expand its product line in 2022, it did so by creating a series of "hit products," each one tailored with the same obsessive detail to a specific family user case.
Li Xiang's greatest insight was that in a world of infinite choice, clarity and focus are the ultimate weapons. By building one perfect car for one specific person, he had managed to win the hearts of hundreds of thousands of customers, and in the process, had built one of the most successful new car companies in the world.