ev.news China: Li Auto Relaunches Mega MPV, BYD Now Earns More Overseas & NIO Posts Another Quarterly Profit | 03 Sep 2026

0:00Welcome back to the podcast on EV News China. Leoto launches the Mega MPV. BYD now earns more overseas and Neo posts another quarterly profit. Plus, stay tuned. Later in the show I'll tell you why China is taking the lead in ensuring solid state batteries are everything the marketing materials promise. Welcome back to EV News China. The podcast all about the world's largest EV market. Every day I bring you the latest headlines, insights and analysis from the heart of China's booming EV industry and decode how fast moving developments in the East shape the global EV landscape. Let's kick off with our headline today. Leoto is relaunching the Mega in home trim at $76,000 for MPV luxury. Leoto is launching the seven-seat Pure Bev Mega Home in China for just under 510,000 RMB. It's about 76,000 US equivalent deliveries are due to begin this week, available only in home trim.

1:00The flagship MPV is intended to revive demand after its sales momentum has faltered recently. The price sits around $3,000 below the Mega Ultra launched last April at about $7,500 below the previous Mega Home. Desisting Leoto owners, if you do want to upgrade and buy the new vehicle, get the 270 degree electrically dimmable glass worth around $2,500, completely free of charge as a loyalty bonus. The lower price is matched though by a hardware glow-up. The Mega gains four LiDAR sensors up from one plus standard rear wheel steering, steer by wire and an 800-volt active anti-roll system. It's obviously a high-voltage architecture with fast charging. We'll get on to that in a moment. Its cabin replaces the previous dual center screen arrangement, which was 15.7-inch dual screens, with a separate passenger display with a 29-inch integrated OLED 6K panoramic

2:07display. All-wheel drive combines the front motor of 155 kW rear motor 258. That's plenty of power, even though this is a big barge, a 108 kWh pack, not LFP, like pretty much all the EVs coming out of China now. This is a turnery lithium-ion pack. Gives a CLTC range of 710 km. Lioto says charging power exceeds 520 kW, and it'll add 500 km of range in just 10 minutes. The company also says its anti-roll system eliminates body roll during cornering. There's no doubt. From what I've told you so far, from the tech specs, this is meant to be a big technological hardware upgrade. I can only describe the second row, the two captains' chairs, as being like a first-class plain seat, not that I've been in first class on, I don't know, Eti had airways or something,

3:09but from the pictures you see in the YouTube videos that have watched in the past, people doing these reviews of ultra-luxury, it does just look like too big. Well, for one of a better example, lazy boy chairs. Like this just looks the most luxurious place to be in the second row. Two captains' chairs, third row is a three row bench, but again, bench does not do this thing, any kind of justice. An upfront super-luxury is one of the pictures they released today of the new home trim is all with a white interior. Couldn't find out whether this is a white leather or an animal-free substitute. Look, this thing just looks just so nice inside. The home tag, the home trim, is I think absolutely perfect for it, because this is not only a home from home, I can tell you, with two small children, this is a lot nicer than my home. What a place to be. Alright, let's get round to it. The reset arrives after mega deliveries fell to only 336 units in July of this year,

4:11down 88% year on year. Last September, they were selling almost 3,500 every month. A subsequent fire and recall involving almost 11,500 vehicles interrupted the momentum. The overall MPV market is limited, while pure electric powertrains are not yet the only preference for consumers that potentially want to do mega miles pun intended, of course, because e-revs are a thing in China with the big battery, 7080kWh, plus the fuel tank, and they will advertise the 1700km range number as the big range number to move people very long distances. This is of course a pure bev, but with very, very fast charging. Li Auto also plans right-hand drive versions by the end of the year. Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand, named in the report today. I also add Australia, of course, and I would chip in that the UK is a right-hand drive

5:11market, but they have no infrastructure here to start selling it. Li Auto is investing in new tech at lower prices, yet there might be one sticking point which remains, which I haven't mentioned so far. The rather unconventional exterior design could be one hurdle that no revised facier can wholly remove. Let's move on. BYD overseas revenue is exceeding its China revenue as domestic business falls. BYD generated more money outside of China than inside China's borders in the first half of 2026 for the first time, with overseas sales 53% of BYD's revenue. Overseas revenue reached 181.3 billion yuan, that's 27 billion USD, according to company filings, and the business also brought stronger margins overseas revenue increased 34% year on year in the first six months of 2026, while revenue from China decreased over the same time, 31%.

6:11BYD released its interim results at the end of August as the domestic market remained under serious pressure from the competition and the ongoing price war. Insurance registration data, monitored by China EV data tracker, showed the BYD brand registered almost 800,000 vehicles in China in the first half of the year, down almost 46%. Whereas BYD sold almost 800,000 vehicles outside of China during the first half of the year, according to company filings, that was up almost 71% over the same time last year. Monthly though, it sold 190,000 cars overseas in August. I told you that data earlier in the week here on EV news China, that's a record for BYD, and it was up 134% on August of last year. The overseas and domestic numbers I've given you by the way all include the group figure, that is denser, fanking bow, young one, and of course BYD and more. They attributed the riots in first half margins, mainly down to growth overseas.

7:15The group gross margin rose to 18.85% from 18% a year earlier. These operations reached a gross margin of 22%. Leaving the foreign business to carry more than the revenue alone. Talking BYD will quickly mention the C-Lion 0.8 has launched in China today. It's a flagship SUV and it's a part of the ocean lineup that is in the higher price range for that lineup. It's eight variants cost from $34,000 to $41.5,000 and span purebeth and dmip plug-in hybrids. BYAs can select rear-wheel drive or all-wheel drive, five-seat or six-seat layout, rear-wheel drive models can get 900 km of CLTC range, all-wheel drive, nox 100 km off of that. The plug-in hybrids come with 400 km of CLTC battery range on the rear-wheel drive, and all-wheel drive nox 50 km off of that data 350.

8:16But then of course you've got the fuel tank. BYD gives the plug-in hybrid a combined range of 1,650 km with full-time, full charge. Now every version uses the upgraded BYD next-gen blade battery 2.0 and supports flash charging or megawatt charging technology. BYD says the battery is on this, 10-17-5, 10-97-9 minutes. There's loads of tech. This is a flagship SUV in the ocean series. So DOSUS A intelligent body control, dual-chain-bearer suspension, active rear-wheel steering also feature all things that feature on Western cars costing two or three times the price of this. The model though has to stand out, the throwing technology at it, in the mid-size family SUV market, maybe large SUV depending on where you're listening to this. Like X-Pung's G9L, great warm motors, YV8X, Leotos i6, leaves the BYD name to make an upmarket case to family buyers in the mainstream, and they're leaving the brands like Denzer

9:21and Fung Cheng Bao to retain the clearer premium position in the Chinese market. Now we'll do one more story before we take a break. NEO has recorded it's now third consecutive quarter of non-gap profitability. Are they out of the woods? NEO for a long time talked about the very survival of the company. Well, it's gap losses, showed the business is basically a break even. Revenue was 32.14 billion RMB, that's $4.78 billion, up 70% year on year and 26% quarter on quarter. NEO delivered over 107,000 vehicles, last quarter, up 50% year over year and 30% quarter on quarter. NEO has been significantly described Q2 as a period of higher volumes and higher prices. Costs remain the awkward part for so many Chinese startups though, R&D spending was $318 million and raw material costs are increasing across the industry. Yet margins held 18%, a vehicle margin is 18.5%, overall gross margin about the same.

10:26The big test now is whether NEO can keep operations balanced at around 100,000 vehicles per quarter and then move forward. Drive on to 150,000, 200,000 vehicles a quarter without its battery-swapping network, which soaks up money and investment. And it's three brand structure becoming a burden. We'll take a break, we'll come back, we'll talk CO2 and Ford in China, back in the moment. All right, welcome back to EV News China, the spin off of EV News daily. This weekend, look out for a special podcast in your feed, EV News Tech. So it's the first one of those, I don't have special shows before, but in the rebrand from EV News Daily to EV.News, we thought we'd make room for six programs. So EV News briefly daily in China happen, at least Monday to Friday, sometimes more often than Monday to Friday. But that's your basic service of those 15 podcasts a week showing up in your feed. Plus we made room for EV News Tech, EV News Europe and EV News policy.

11:30Three areas that I think do provide us some space to dig into, special topics. And this weekend, look out for a podcast in your feed, a called EV News Tech, because we're looking at batteries. When it comes to battery health, high mileage is not the scary number. We look at Avaloo, of course their distributor in Australia and New Zealand is Test EV, their sponsor of EV News Daily. And so they have looked at 500,000 battery tests from 20 main models. And the data show us some really interesting things about battery health. I have a listen to that special show in your feed, if you want. Let's get back to EV News China. China's CO2 emissions fell by 1% in Q2 this year. It doesn't sound much, but the devil's in the detail. China's coal-fired power generation actually increased. Oil consumption fell by 9%, and oil consumption from transport fell by 16%.

12:30Marking the first overall emissions decline driven by lower oil use, rather than lower coal. The decline partly came from supply disruptions through the Gulf and the straight-of-core moves during the crisis, but that really didn't tell the whole story. China was not merely moving around less. In fact, in some cases, quite the opposite. Cross-regional passenger trips were up. Alright, by 0.1%, it's a rounding error. But still, it was up year on year. Urban trips up by 3% and commercial freight tonnage up by 2.4%. EVs, along with rail and public transport, allowed transport activity to rise while CO2 emissions from oil use in transport plummeted. The analysis estimated that EVs have now avoided 19 million tonnes of oil consumption in the quarter, and 35 megatons of CO2 in the quarter alone. Charging volumes were up, so it proves that people are using their EVs. More charging was up 60%, indicating heavier use of existing EVs.

13:31Their effect on oil consumption was almost twice that implied by the increase in EV numbers alone. Now, let's talk about Ford. Ford is preparing to send an initial batch of 1,000 China-produced transit vans to Europe, using a Chinese production base to supply a market where car makers face pressure to cut costs and compete with the Chinese manufacturers. European orders opened in the second quarter, with customer deliveries expected before the end of the year. Ford's China calls the strategy in China for the world. It says the transit exports will eventually cover 52 countries and regions in five continents. Ford is looking to China, not merely as a market to sell their cars, but as a base from which to sell cars into Europe. Ford developed the transit with jangling motors. It's commercial vehicle JV in China. Now, a couple more stories to get into today. Let's talk about how China has put automotive consumption first amongst various measures

14:33to increase spending on durable goods in a document jointly issued by seven government departments on the 31st of August. It's 20 measures in total are intended to expand consumer consumption during the 15th five-year plan period, with total retail sales of consumer goods expected to be 60 trillion new on by 2030. The document treats the car, the EV, not merely as a purchase you make once, but as a source of consumption through its whole life. Authorities intend to strengthen data sharing between agencies while end of life, vehicle recycling is to be upgraded and oversight of dismantling companies and their qualifications is going to become much stricter. Charging infrastructure is also to improve on highways and at transport hubs. The stated aim is to balance the coverage of public charging piles along with parking spaces, aligning supply and demand. For highway service areas with electric vehicles becoming higher standards for vehicle stations

15:34and also for some where the consumers can charge their EVs. Now, the ION UT, the GLEE2 and Leap Motors B05, all very small EVs out of China by the way, have each received five-star safety ratings under the new stricter EuroNCAP 2026 assessments. The three results come consecutively and were presented as evidence that Chinese small vehicles can now reach the highest safety ratings available, and those that are targeted by European, Korean and Japanese established rivals. The scores were actually impressive across the board. The GLEE2 recorded the highest safe driving score of the three, 79%, the Leap Motors B05, that on crash protection with 92%. EuroNCAP nevertheless identified some inconsistent, automatic emergency braking performances in the GLEE and over reliance on the touchscreen for driving controls in the ION UT.

16:40EuroNCAP will now be paying more attention to whether you have to take your eyes off the road to touch a button on a touchscreen rather than use that muscle memory to use your fingers or your thumbs on the steering wheel to do the same action, which means your concentration on road safety not being interrupted. One of the things we'll see more and more companies putting buttons back for the core functions I bet we will. Now let's finish off with this. This is interesting. I've talked to you a few times about this over the last year, maybe more than a few times. It's one of those things that I keep banging this drum. I don't think anyone else is talking about it yet, and they will be down the line. Of course, I guess if you work in the deep inside the automotive industry, supply chain, associated, you know this already, and you are aware of this, but no one in the wider world is having this conversation. And it's that China has gone from being a copier to a fast follower to an innovator by using that joint venture, it's got a method of bringing companies in and then to being

17:45the rule maker. And when you make the rules, then you achieve a whole new status in the industry. And I'll finish off with this story today. The International Electro Technical Commission has approved a China-led proposal to begin an international standard for solar state batteries for EVs. The approval was on August 21st and starts a new standards process rather than completing one. According to Hunan, today where I found this story, China, France, Japan and South Korea, the initial working group, and they'll spend two to three years on this, the proposed standard, sets will set common testing parameters for solid state packs. Its test places a cell in a vacuum chamber at 120 degrees Celsius for six hours. Cells that lose more than 0.5% of their mass through evaporation of volatile organic compounds would fail the definition of being a solid state battery. And that's important. It's a distinction that matters because batteries marketed at solid state can actually be semi

18:47solid state designs, containing both solid and liquid electrolytes. There's the Wheelion battery used by Neo. There's the Qingpou supplied battery in the IML6. Their examples of not being pure solid state. And like I say, it's interesting. And China now sets the rules of what is a solid state battery. Then they are, by definition, the rule makers that the rest of the world has to dance to. Now well, I'll carry on mentioning it until someone else realizes, oh maybe I'm completely wrong on the whole thing. China is helping to define solid state cells, while the regulatory classification of individual semi solid products is still unsettled. That is very much a work in progress. That's your podcast for today. Thanks for listening. See you on the next one.