A Nio executive has asked Li Auto to stop sharing weekly sales rankings, saying it's a low-level competition that interferes with other companies' operations.

A Nio (NYSE: NIO) executive has asked Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI) to stop sharing weekly sales rankings, saying it's a low-level competition that interferes with other companies' operations.

The Chinese government has called on industries not to engage in low-level "involution", Nio's assistant vice president of branding and communications, Ma Lin, said in a Weibo post today.

"Involution" is a term that has become popular in Chinese over the past few years, often referring to fierce competition between stakeholders that doesn't benefit anyone.

Publishing weekly sales rankings is more or less the same thing as low-level involution, Ma said, calling on Li Xiang, Li Auto's founder, chairman and CEO, to get his team to stop continuing to do so.

“The mission of Chinese car companies at the moment is to achieve technological breakthroughs through R&D, isn't it?” Ma said.

Each month, automakers publish audited deliveries, a monthly figure that essentially reflects the business situation at the time, Ma said, adding that the weekly rankings, however, can be disruptive to normal business operations.

Ma attached four images to his Weibo post, one of which was a screenshot of a media report showing China's Politburo asking industries to strengthen self-discipline and prevent “involutional” competition. The other three images were about Nio's July 27 Nio IN event where it announced progress on the Shenji NX9031 chip and SkyOS.

Li Auto has been publishing weekly sales rankings every Tuesday since the end of March 2023, covering the weekly sales of major new car makers, luxury brands, and major new energy vehicle (NEV) makers.

These weekly sales figures are measured in terms of insurance registrations of cars, unlike orders or deliveries, and are seen by many investors as an important reference for tracking carmakers' monthly deliveries.

Li Auto stopped sharing these figures in the first half of May last year, which Li said on Weibo at the time was due to complaints from some of the company's peers.

Interestingly, Li Auto restarted sharing those numbers on May 23, 2023, to continue to show that it's ahead of the pack among China's EV startups.

Li Auto briefly stopped sharing weekly figures again at the end of March this year, following the failed launch of the Li Mega MPV (multi-purpose vehicle), and resumed sharing those figures at the beginning of May.

Li Auto seems to be hoping to show off its strong weekly sales to reinforce its leadership position in the public mindset, which in turn drives order growth.

But its rankings have sparked discontent among some of its peers.

Prior to Ma's comments today, Nio's co-founder and president, Qin Lihong, had expressed his displeasure in a media interview after the July 27 Nio IN 2024 event.

Nio never authorized any other organization to publish weekly rankings with the company's name on them, and the numbers were never approved by Nio, Qin said at the time, according to a video seen by CnEVPost.

Qin said other companies have no authorization to publish lists that mention Nio, and said he hoped Nio is excluded from such rankings.

Earlier today, Li Auto, as usual, released the latest weekly rankings showing it had 12,800 insurance registrations last week and Nio at 5,400.

China EV insurance registrations for week ending Jul 28: Nio 5,400, Tesla 13,500, Xiaomi 3,900, BYD 70,600