As Li Auto's new Li ONE is about to be launched, an accident has put the company in the spotlight.

A tractor-trailer carrying eight Li ONE vehicles caught fire on a highway in Tieling, Liaoning province in northeastern China, causing them to be completely destroyed, according to a Friday report on yiche.com.

According to the report, the pictures show that these Li ONEs are slightly different from the current model and they are supposed to be new models that have not been released yet.

The fire was extinguished one hour after it started. With the information available, it appears that the accident was caused by the trailer fire that ripped through the Li ONEs on board, the report said.

Li Auto will hold a spring launch event on May 25 at 20:00 Beijing Time, when it will unveil the new Li ONE model.

The upgraded model will be priced at RMB 400,000 ($62,000), up RMB 72,000 ($11,000) from the current model, according to Yan Yupeng, a well-known car blogger and founder of xincheping.com.

This means that the damage caused by the eight new Li ONEs being burned could reach RMB 3.2 million.

Li Auto currently has only one model on sale - the Li ONE, released in October 2018 and with deliveries starting in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Li Auto's upcoming release of the upgraded Li ONE is a slight facelift with optimized upgrades to the exterior, interior and features, and potentially more than 60 new and improved features.

According to Li Auto's previously released declaration drawings, there are no major changes to the exterior design of the new car, with more options for the body color and four-wheel styles to choose from.

The car's length, width and height are 5030/1960/1785mm, with an increase of 10mm in length and 25mm in height.

The new model will continue to use extended-range technology and will be equipped with a 1.2T engine with a maximum power of 96kW.

A poster released by Li Auto on its WeChat account on Thursday showed that the new Li ONE will be equipped with the Journey 3 chip, the latest chip from local chip company Horizon Robotics.

Li Auto's new Li ONE said to cost $11,000 more than current model

(Source: yiche.com)