This bizarre machine is the Li MEGA, a giant MPV with a wild and polarizing design. Even the color names are different than elsewhere. The one that I saw is painted in Elephant Gray. The other colors are Panda White, Gray, and Silver. Two colors with a special name, and two colors without. What to make of that? Well, what to make of of the Mega?
The MEGA, in all-caps, is a new take on MPV design. It can be called revolutionary, ugly, or crazy, but it sure is something out of the ordinary. A daring idea, a concept for the road, or a spaceship. Some compare it with a high-speed train. That makes some sense, especially when you look at the front of the MEGA. There is nothing on the nose, just empty bodywork. The headlights are pushed to the sides. There is a camera above the license plate and a large sensor pod below the plate. It also has various sensors in the bumper section and a lidar above the windshield.
The Li logo is located in a black bar just below the windshield.
Li is a Chinese car brand, owned by a company called Li Auto. The Chinese name is Li Xiang (理想). Li Auto was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Beijing. Its first car, the Li One SUV, was launched in 2019. At the moment, Li Auto sells four SUVs: the Li L6, Li L7, Li L8 (successor of the One) and the L9. All the SUVs are EREVs. The Li MEGA is the brand’s first EV.
The MEGA amazes the eye from every angle. It is just so different. It was designed to be the most aerodynamic MPV on the market. It has a raking windscreen angle, a slowly descending roofline, a wide E-pillar, and an abrupt kammtail. The wheelarches barely bulge. The 18-inch tires are relatively small for such an enormous car, but that too helps to improve the aerodynamics. There are no visible door handles anywhere on the car. All this helped to get to a drag coefficient of only 0.215 Cd.
The size of the MEGA is 5350/1965/1850, with a wheelbase of… 3300! The curb weight is steep too: 2785 kilos. The Li MEGA seats seven in a 2/2/3 setup. It has a 500-liter trunk space or 1067-liter with the third row down.
The interior is spacious and airy, thanks to the large windows are general vastness of the vehicle. The seats are clad in real Nappa leather, and the build quality is excellent. The drive selector is mounted on the steering wheel column.
Tissue box alarm! Every Chinese driver has a tissue box inside his/her vehicle. Some car makers design special boxes to put these tissue boxes in, so they don’t lay around. The front seats are super wide and fitted with soft neck pillows. The center tunnel is wide and rather high. It has loads of storage space and four cup holders. The screen situation: the MEGA has a HUD, a small screen in the steering wheel’s center, and a giant twin 15.7-inch central & passenger screen.
Look at that space! Luxury captain seats on the second row with armrests on each side and thick pillows. It has two sunroofs. Between the sunroofs is a 17-inch fold-down screen for entertainment for the rear passengers. It is folded up in my photo, so I borrowed a factory photo to show the screen in action:
All the screens are on. Note the tiny screen in the steering wheel and the HUD. The screen can be used for watching television, movies, playing games, or singing karaoke. A set of game controllers and a set of microphones is standard on board.
The whole cabin, seen at night. The Li MEGA is also equipped with a 21-speaker 2160-watt sound system, a fridge, wireless chargers (one at each seat in the second row, two in the center tunnel in the front row), tray tables for the second row, and 220V power supply.
When the MEGA was unveiled, the design was immediately polarizing opinions. Some compared the Mega with a hearse, others thought it looked like a commercial vehicle, but most compared it to a high-speed train. Bloggers uploaded memes of a MEGA morphed into a train.
This meme made it to the real world when an early MEGA owner slapped CRH stickers onto his car. This, in turn, became a famous car on the same social media. I met this ‘train’ MEGA at a Li Auto service center, it looked super cool. CRH is short for China Railway High-speed, the official English name of China’s high-speed railway network. The characters write Hexie hao (和谐号) (Harmony), the original name of the high-speed trains.
Look at that behind! The rear window is darkened to the absolute max, and fitted in an equally dark frame that extends to the bumper. The light bar is located just below the window.
The Li MEGA was penned by Benjamin Baum, a German designer who used to work for Porsche. Baum also designed the Li L8 and the L9. He is currently working on a new series of full-electric SUVs with a design inspired by the Mega.
The Li logo is again somewhat hidden, now on the window above the light bar.
The Li MEGA is a twin-motor all-wheel drive car. It does not have rear-wheel steering like the Xpeng X9. The combined output is 544 hp and 542 Nm. The horsepower is impressive but the torque seems a tad too low for such a high-end car big car. The top speed is 180 km/h and it does 0-100 in 5.5 seconds.
Characters: 理想, Li Xiang.
Electricity is stored in a 102.7 kWh CATL Qilin 5C ternary lithium battery pack. Energy consumption is 15.9 kWh per 100 kilometers and the range is 710 kilometers CLTC. The MEGA has an 800V architecture for fast charging. Peak charging power is 520 kW and fast charging (30-80%) takes 12 minutes.
The MEGA badge is in capitals, with individual letters that are not perfectly aligned. The E seems to lean to the right a little bit, and the A is too close to the G. Hmm. Li’d better use a single badge here, or find a better robot.
The wide D-pillar continues over the roof. What a car! Sadly for Li Auto, sales have been disappointing. The MEGA sells about 750 units per month, much less than competitors like the Denza D9, the Voyah Dream, Zeekr 009, and the Xpeng X9. Reasons may be the design, the high price, and the limited lineup. Limited is an understatement. Li offers only one MEGA, fully loaded with everything. There are no other trim levels or power train options. The MEGA costs 529.800 yuan or $75.5K. I think it is worth every fen, but it sure is a lot of money for an MPV, no matter how gigantic.
Check that line running from the roof down to thebumper and into the wheel arch. Just brilliant. Somewhat surprisingly, the Mega has standard mirrors instead of camera mirrors, which would have made more sense on a car like this. There is a camera on the front fender, part of the ADAS sensor suite. The MEGA has L2+ ADAS, with a total of 26 sensors including a lidar and a millimeter wave radar. The system is called AD Max and it is powered by two NVIDIA Drive Orin X chips with a combined computing power of 508 TOPS. It can drive autonomously on highways and semi-autonomously in cities.
The Li MEGA. I was so happy to see one on the road. The MEGA is a statement. A daring design move into uncharted territory. As a statement or a vision, it works as intended. But perhaps the MEGA was a step too far for the consumer market. As we have seen with the sad demise of HiPhi Auto, Chinese consumers do have a limit when it comes to the looks of the vehicles that they buy. Well, that’s not the MEGA’s fault, for it is a car that one will never forget.