Chinese electric car company Li Auto's upcoming new Li ONE is expected to get a spec upgrade over the current model, and the price seems to be going up as well.

The new Li ONE 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.

Yan said in a Weibo post on Friday, "The new Li ONE is said to have improved a lot in assisted driving capability, but the price jumped from RMB 328,000 to RMB 400,000, can you accept it?"

Yan posted several pictures of the model showing the price of the new Li ONE at RMB 400,000.

(Source: Weibo)

Li Auto will launch the new Li ONE at its spring launch event on May 25 at 20:00 Beijing Time, which it previously said was titled "How to build a smart electric car that makes a family happier."

Li Auto to hold launch event on May 25, expected to unveil upgraded Li ONE

A poster posted 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.

Horizon released its in-car AI chip Journey 3 in September 2020, which uses a 16-nanometer process and is based on the BPU2.0 architecture developed by it.

With 5 TOPS of AI computing power and typical power consumption of 2.5W, Journey 3 supports application scenarios including high-level assisted driving, intelligent cockpit, automatic parking assistance, high-level autonomous driving and crowdsourced high precision map positioning.

Last month, CnEVPost reported that Li Auto will launch a deep cooperation with Horizon, using the latter's full range of Journey chips to build a sustainable evolution of smart cars.

At the Shanghai Auto Show, which opened at the end of April, a Li ONE Baby Blue appeared at the Horizon Robotics booth.

This is an addition to the smart portfolio of China's new car-making powerhouse, following Nio's partnership with Mobileye and Xpeng Motors' partnership with Nvidia.

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.

Previous reports said that, following these upgrades, the price of the Li ONE may be adjusted from RMB 32.8 million to RMB 350,000-360,000, lower than what Yan's Weibo post revealed.

According to the previously released declaration drawings of the Li Auto, there are no major changes to the exterior design of the new car, with more choices of body color and four wheel styles available.

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 still be equipped with a 1.2T turbocharged engine with a maximum power of 96kW and a ternary lithium battery from China's largest automotive lithium-ion battery maker CALT.

Li Auto's new Li ONE will feature latest chip from Horizon Robotics