Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for Li Auto's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. Today's conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your host, Janet Zhang, Investor Relations of Li Auto. Please go ahead, Janet.
Thank you, Matt. Good evening, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Li Auto's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. The Company's financial and operating results were published in the press release earlier today and are posted on the Company's IR website. On today's call, we have our President, Mr. Kevin Yanan Shen, and our CFO, Mr. Johnny Tie Li, to begin with prepared remarks. Our founder and CEO, Mr. Xiang Li, together with our senior management, Mr. Donghui Ma and Mr. Yan Xie, will join for the Q&A discussion. Before we continue, please be reminded that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the Company's actual results may be materially different from the views expressed today.
Further information regarding risks and uncertainties is included in certain filings of the Company with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. Please also note that Li Auto's earnings press release and this conference call include discussions of unaudited GAAP financial information as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to Li Auto's disclosure documents on the IR section of our website, which contain a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP measures. With that, I will now turn the call over to our President. Please go ahead, Kevin.
Thank you, Janet. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. I will review our third quarter key highlights. In the third quarter, we navigated our model succession and launch cycle, as well as the challenging microenvironment and supply chain constraint. Against this backdrop, we delivered 26,524 vehicles, up 5.6% year-over-year. Despite a supply chain bottleneck, we delivered over 10,000 Li L9s in September, the model's first full month of production. This marked the first time that a Chinese-branded premium model priced over RMB 400,000 achieved monthly sales of more than 10,000 vehicles, demonstrating Li L9 as the top pick among full-size SUVs for family users.
This success was due to the exceptional strength of our team, their outstanding management of the Li L9 ramp-up process, and their skillful collaboration with our supply chain partners. As Li L9 continues to surpass user expectation with class-leading features in drivability, safety, interior space, passenger experience, and smartness, demand remain robust, providing constantly strong order inflow for the model. Li L9 has been the sales champion among full-size SUVs in China since its deliveries started. Benefiting from Li L9 strength, our total delivery in October reached 10,052, representing a 31.4% year-over-year increase. This followed by a record-breaking 15,034 vehicle deliveries in November. As always, we would like to extend sincere gratitude to our over 200,000 Li ONE users.
We will continue to adhere to higher than industry service standards and continue to improve the performance of Li ONE through OTAs. On September 30th, we launched Li L8, a six-seat premium family SUV that succeeded Li ONE. We also unveiled Li L7, a 7-seat flagship family SUV on the same day. We commenced the deliveries of Li L8 in November. Let me provide more details of this vehicle. Li L8 employs our new generation all-wheel drive range extension system and boast over 100 features in their standard configurations. It's available in two trims, Pro and Max, providing users with flexible choices of smartness. The two trims are harnessed respectively with Li AD Pro and Li AD Max autonomous driving systems.
Pro is powered by the Horizon Robotics Journey 5 chip with 128 TOPS of computing power, while Max is powered by the dual Orin-X chips with 508 TOPS of computing power. The two trims are equipped with innovative smart space system, SS Pro and SS Max, featuring a first-row full-screen, four-screen interactive system and a five-screen three-dimensional interactive system respectively. These packages bring a new level of driving and entertainment experience to smart electric vehicles. We are pleased that Li L8 numerous class-leading feature have delighted its first batch of users, we believe that their satisfaction for the vehicle has broadly exceeded their expectations. We are confident that the Li L8 will stand among the finest option for six-seaters priced over RMB 300,000.
Together with Li L9, the sales champion of full-size SUVs in China, and the Li L7, which we believe will be a top choice among five-seat SUVs priced over RMB 300,000. We expect to captivate a broader range of family users with differentiated needs, and gain a larger market share in the RMB 300,000-RMB 500,000 price segment. We are encouraged by Li L9's continued strong sales performance and the solid demand for Li L8. Considering the ongoing supply chain uncertainty, we expected fourth quarter deliveries to be in the range of 45,000-48,000 vehicles. We will continue to collaborate closely with our supply chain partners to react quickly to changes and to mitigate potential risks. During the third quarter, we continued to demonstrate our strong commitment to vehicle safety.
According to the vehicle safety evaluation results released on November fourth by the China Insurance Automotive Safety Index, or C-IASI, Li L9 obtained the G grading, the highest safety rating in three out of four evaluation categories: occupant safety, pedestrian safety, and assistance safety. In the category of crash worthiness and repair economy, Li L9 received an M rating, one of the top results received by premium vehicles tested by C-IASI since 2017. In addition, it was the first domestic full-size SUV tested for 25% frontal offset impact on both the driver and passenger sides, and achieved the G rating for both tests. Thanks to its ultra-high strength body structure, Li L9 also demonstrated class-leading performance with the ability to withstand a peak force of 116,475 newtons in the roof strength test.
Its roof can withstand a weight of 11.8 ton on the side, effectively preventing cabin deformation and safeguard a relatively large head space for drivers and passengers to survive in case of accidents. We continually improved our vehicle's performance and features through OTA after their delivery. In early November, we released our OTA 4.1 upgrade for Li L9, further enhancing user experience with our upgraded the AD, autonomous driving system, and smart in-car voice assistant, as well as improved Smart Space interactions and entertainment experiences. In particular, the vehicle's three 15.7-inch 3K automotive-grade OLED screens can now project the same events and all game from the three different camera angles, transforming Li L9 into a great sports lounge for families and friends to watch games, such as the ongoing FIFA World Cup.
To create successful products, we have two core goals. Firstly, for consumers, we choose to exceed their needs rather than merely meeting them. Secondly, as a company, we aim to achieve healthy growth margin and self-sustaining cash flow, which will allow us to continually invest in our dual-growth engine of R&D and business capabilities. Especially, our R&D efforts will be directed more comprehensively across products, platforms, and systems, with the long-term goal of growing into a world-class technology company. Our business capability include commercial, supply, and organization capabilities. With continued investment in R&D and business capability, supported by our healthy growth margin, we will continue to pursue product and commercial success, and foster a healthy long-term development model. This flywheel has been the strategic focus since our founding, and we believe will remain our strategy going forward. By understanding this business model, you will understand the Li Auto more.
Our supply chain remains one of the most significant variables with respect to our deliveries. We are accelerating supply chain deployment and optimization to build our resilience for fluctuations and support our rapid growth sales. Importantly, we are committed to extending our in-house development and manufacturing capability vertically along our supply chain. Through our forthcoming self-owned manufacturing base and the majority-owned JVs, we expect to be able to self-produce both range extenders and the five-in-one electric drive units that can support our EREV delivery targets. On the BEV side, we have commenced construction of a semiconductor manufacturing base in the hi-tech zone of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province in the third quarter. It will focus on R&D and production of automotive-grade power module based on the third generation semiconductor material, silicon carbide. The power module is a core component of our self-developed 800-volt electric drive system.
Alongside our dedicated investment in supply chain, we continue to expand our direct sales and servicing network and increase our brand awareness with upgraded brand image to fuel our business expansion. As of November 30, 2022, we had 276 retail stores covering 119 cities, as well as 317 servicing centers and Li Auto authorized body and paint shops operating in 226 cities. During the third quarter, we also started to open retail stores in places other than shopping malls, such as automotive theme parks, to diversify our locations and reach more varied target users. The retail stores we opened at Hangzhou T Car Auto Theme Park in September is a good example. Featuring our new design language and warm colors, it creates a welcoming interactive space for visitors.
It also enjoys strong foot traffic due to its excellent location and word of mouth publicity. In addition, this store also offers customer a comprehensive and convenient experience with combined showroom and delivery center functions. The expansion and upgrade of our direct sales and servicing network have boosted both our brand recognition and our ability to fulfill user demand for our compelling products, which we are confident will drive meaningful sales growth going forward. We will continue to innovate new retail formats, finding new ways to attract more users while providing them with better services and experiences. Moving to R&D. We believe R&D capability lies at the core of product competitiveness as we scale our company from one to 10. Therefore, we insist on full stack self-development of core technologies such as electric drive, intelligent space, and autonomous driving system.
We have spared no effort in solidifying our leadership in the EREV space with continued investment in our new generation range extension system. We are actively self-developing the key building blocks of our 800-volt HPC BEV platform, including the power chip, power module, electronic control unit, electro-electric motor, and transmission system, aiming to be one of the first automaker to roll out HPC BEV vehicles. We are also proud to lead the industry in smart space R&D. For example, we self-developed our smart space Li AI system powered by MIMO-Net, a six-zone human voice enhanced network, and MVS-Net, a multi-view visual fusion network. Li AI can help create accurate sound perception in a complex acoustic environment and identify complicated gestures, enabling an unparalleled in-car entertainment and interactive experience.
With respect to autonomous driving, as of November 30th, more than 170,000 family users have enjoyed our highway NOA feature. We have further enhanced our vehicle's ability to perceive dynamic obstacles and static road structures in a complex environment, as well as their ability to forecast traffic participants' action. We were the first in the industry to extend the concept of 3D hypothesis, 2D verification to multi-mode sensor, and the Li L9 was the first to realize highway NOA based on an NVIDIA Orin SoC chipset. Meanwhile, we have partnered with Tsinghua University and MIT to complete the world first public project to construct high-precision maps in real time. Intelligent manufacturing is another core competence for any successful automaker, and another area in which we excel. First, we have industry-leading manufacturing equipment.
Our fully self-developed manufacturing management software, LiMOS, can greatly improve production efficiency and quality with precision control during the entire automotive manufacturing process. This system will be implemented in Our future factories, shortening new factories deployment cycle by more than three months. Our R&D efforts are not limited to building a great car, but also how to make it. We use vision, sensors, and algorithms to precisely control the workflow of hardware equipment in order to realize flexible production and intelligence inspection. As we strive to enhance our R&D and manufacturing capabilities, we also aspired to make a positive environmental and social impact through our sound government structure and the dedication to sustainable development. In September 2022, we received an MSCI ESG rating of AA for the second year in a row, maintaining our leadership position in the automotive industry in terms of ESG performance.
Moreover, following the earthquake in Luding County, Sichuan Province, on September 5th, we made a donation to help the affected people and to support disaster relief efforts. We hope to play our part as a corporate citizen and a member of the community by helping people in need. We look forward to sharing more of our ESG endeavors in our next ESG report, which we expect in the first half of next year. In addition, we are pleased to be included as a constituent stock in the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index, effective December 5th. This is a strong recognition of our underlying strengths and investment value. Lastly, as you may have seen from today's press release, from January 1st, 2023, I will no longer serve as the company's president.
I will spend more time to support the company's new round of organizational upgrades to prepare for its future. In the future, our CEO, Li Xiang, will take over the responsibility of sales and services. Our newly appointed President, Mr. Ma Donghui, will be responsible for the overall close the loop management from product R&D to procurement and supply, production and manufacturing and quality. Xie Yan, our new CTO, will lead the company's R&D team to explore the most advanced underlying technologies in the smart electric vehicle industry. I would like to thank our investors for the support and trust they have placed in Li Auto and myself. I firmly believe that Li Auto will continue to achieve great results under the leadership of the new management team, and continue to lead the smart new energy vehicle industry in China.
With that, I will turn the call over to our CFO, John, for a closer look of our financial performance. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Kevin. Hello, everyone. I will now go over some of our financial results for the third quarter of 2022. To be mindful of the length of this call, I will address financial highlights here and encourage you to refer to our earnings press release, which is posted online for additional details. Total revenues in the third quarter of 2022 were RMB 9.34 billion or $1.31 billion, representing a increase of 20.2% from RMB 7.78 billion in the third quarter of 2021.
This included RMB 9.05 billion or $1.27 billion of vehicle sales in the third quarter of 2022, up 22.5% year-over-year, and 6.6% quarter-over-quarter. This increase was mainly due to our delivery of Li L9 starting in late August, which raised our average selling price in the third quarter of 2022. Revenues from other sales and services were RMB 296.4 million, or $41.7 million in the third quarter of 2022, representing a decrease of 23.9% from the same period last year, and the increase of 19% from the second quarter of this year.
The year-over-year decrease was attributable to the sales of automotive regulatory credits in the third quarter of 2021, which didn't recur in the third quarter of 2022. The quarter-over-quarter increase in revenue from other sales and services was mainly due to the increased sales of accessories and the services in line with higher accumulated vehicle sales. Cost of sales in third quarter of 2022 was RMB 8.16 billion, or $1.15 billion, representing an increase of 36.8% year-over-year, and the increase of 19.1% quarter-over-quarter.
The increase in cost of sales was mainly driven by higher average cost of sales due to our delivery of Li L9 starting in late August, and a provision related to Li ONEs as we lower its order forecast, considering the stronger than expected market demands for Li L9 and our accelerated launch of Li L8. The provision in the amount of RMB 802.8 million or $112.9 million was made based on our updated order forecast for Li ONE after the launch of Li L9 and Li L8. Gross profit in the third quarter of 2022 was RMB 1.18 billion or $166.2 million, decreasing 34.8% year-over-year and 37.1% quarter-over-quarter.
Vehicle margin in the third quarter of 2022 was 12% compared with 21.1% in the third quarter of 2021, and 21.2% in the second quarter of this year, mostly due to the provision related to Li ONE, as just mentioned. Excluding this impact, the vehicle margin was 20.8% in the third quarter of 2022. Going forward with our production ramp-up and responsible cost management, we expect to realize greater economics of scale and drive costs down further, putting us back on track to hit our profitability inflection point. Gross margin in the third quarter of 2022 was 12.7% compared to 23.3% in the third quarter of last year, and 21.5% in the second quarter of this year.
Operating expenses in the third quarter of 2022 were RMB 3.31 billion or $465.6 million, increasing 73.4% year-over-year and 15.9% quarter-over-quarter. R&D expenses in the third quarter of 2022 were RMB 1.8 billion or $253.6 million, up 103.1% year-over-year, and 17.8% quarter-over-quarter. The year-over-year increase was primarily driven by increased expenses associated with future models as well as increased employee compensation as a result of our growing number of R&D staff. Its quarter-over-quarter increase was primarily driven by increased expenses associated with the future models.
Selling, general and administrative expenses in the third quarter of 2022 were RMB 1.51 billion or $211.9 million, up 47.6% year-over-year and 13.8% quarter-over-quarter. The year-over-year increase was primarily driven by increased employee compensation as a result of the growth in our staff headcount, as well as increased rental expenses associated with the expansion of the company's sales network. Its quarter-over-quarter increase was primarily driven by increased marketing and promotion activities and increased employee compensation as a result of the growth in our staff headcount.
Loss from operations in the third quarter of 2022 was RMB 2.13 billion or $299.4 million, compared a loss of RMB 97.8 million in the same period last year and a loss of RMB 976.5 million in the second quarter of this year. Net loss was RMB 1.65 billion or $231.3 million in the third quarter of 2022, compared with RMB 21.5 million in the third quarter of last year, and RMB 641 million in the second quarter of 2022. Now turning to our balance sheet and cash flow.
Our cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, term deposits, short-term investments, long-term term deposits, A long-term financial instruments that were included in long-term investments totaled RMB 55.83 billion or $7.85 billion as of September 30, 2022. Net cash used in operating activities in the third quarter of 2022 was RMB 508.3 million or $71.5 million. The change in net cash used in operating activities over both the third quarter of last year and the second quarter of this year, was mainly due to the increase in payment related to inventory purchase, partially offset by the increase in cash received from the customer.
Free cash flow was negative RMB 1.96 billion or negative $275.3 million in the third quarter of 2022. Now for our business outlook. For the fourth quarter of 2022, the company expects the deliveries to be between 45,000 and 48,000 vehicles, representing an increase of 27.8%-36.3% from the fourth quarter of last year. The company also expects fourth quarter total revenues to be between RMB 16.51 billion and RMB 17.61 billion, or $2.32 billion and $2.47 billion, representing an increase of 55.4%-65.6% from the fourth quarter of last year.
This business outlook reflects the company's current and preliminary view on the business situation and the market condition, which is subject to change. Going forward, we believe our nimble and collaborative corporate culture, execution discipline, and strong balance sheet will allow us to face challenging markets head on and continue to deploy capital and resources efficiently to focus on our products and innovation initiatives and drive our long-term growth. I will now turn the call over to the operator and to start the Q&A session. Thank you.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question via the phones, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, please limit yourself to two questions. If you have additional questions, you can reenter the queue. Please ask your question in Chinese first, then follow with the English translation. Our first question will come from Tim Hsiao with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
[Foreign language]
So how should we think about stable monthly run rate of the sales of L7, L8, L9 in aggregate next year, could the sales of the whole Li models stay at around like 25,000-30,000 level on a monthly basis as previously expected. In the meantime, considering the decline in store traffic in October November due to the COVID, does Li Auto's order backlog so far remain strong and adequate enough to bolster the delivery momentum into first quarter 2023?
Tim, you want me to answer your first question first, right? About the outlook of L9, L8, and L7. We can only make judgment based on the competitiveness of this product and also outlook based on the market size of each of these products segment. Our outlook is that for L9, the stabilized monthly sales should be around 8,000- 11,000. That's our estimation.
For L8, Will be 10,000-15,000. 14,000. L7, now it's quite early to do estimation. Basically, for the Q1 outlook, we believe the beginning of the Q1 will, our backlog will continue to drive strong delivery performance. Of course, after Chinese New Year, we need to bring more order in. We have strong confidence that in Q1 we'll continue to beat the overall PV market performance. Tim, as you mentioned, there are some factors that beyond our control, like COVID. We believe we'll beat the overall PV market performance.
Thank you. [Foreign language]
My second question is about the factory EV, the pure EV. What's the current update on Li Auto's BEV pipeline? Will the company follow its original plan to launch two BEV models next year, within 2023?
We're pretty certain that next year we'll be releasing our first electric vehicle. The two big events are next year. One is the release of the first electric vehicle, and the other one is the delivery, commence of delivery of L7.
Thank you very much for the update. Our next question will come from Olivia Xu with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
[Foreign language] 呃 ， 谢 谢 管 理 层 ， 我 是 恩 明 。 那 ， 呃 ， 我 的 第 一 个 问 题 ， 呃 ， 是 关 于 这 个 我 们 ， 啊 ， 这 次 的 这 个 公 告 也 提 到 ， 呃 ， 会 自 建 这 个 半 导 体 ， 就 是 碳 化 硅 的 这 个 产 品 。 那 想 了 解 一 下 ， 因 为 ， 呃 ， 包 括 我 们 的 同 行 ， 呃 ， 有 些 ， 呃 ， 同 行 会 选 择 ， 呃 ， 这 个 自 建 电 子 产 品 ， 但 有 些 同 行 会 选 择 要 自 己 做 这 个 芯 片 ， 或 者 设 计 IC。 那 ， 呃 ， 因 为 我 看 到 我 们 这 个 公 告 里 面 提 到 说 为 了 还 是 为 了 这 个 power， 呃 ， 这 个 超 快 充 ， 所 以 说 我 们 要 做 这 个 。 但 是 ， 呃 ， 想 了 解 一 下 这 个 管 理 层 ， 啊 ， 最 后 决 定 这 个 ， 这 个 component 去 自 建 ， 呃 ， 最 主 要 原 因 是 觉 得 说 将 来 的 这 个 供 需 ， 呃 ， 会 非 常 不 平 衡 ， 还 是 说 ， 呃 ， 它 的 这 个 产 品 这 个 壁 垒 比 较 高 ， 然 后 我 们 有 信 心 有 把 握 跟 在 这 个 合 作 ， 能 够 做 出 一 个 比 较 高 质 量 的 碳 ， 碳 化 硅 ， 然 后 ， 呃 ， 导 入 在 我 们 这 个 纯 电 车 ， 然 后 有 比 较 好 的 这 个 供 應 商 。 这 是 我 第 一 个 问 题 。 呃 ，
Now let me translate my two questions. The first question is about the pricing and competition. Recently, Tesla has announced a meaningful pricing cut in Chinese market. What is the auto response to that? And how should we examine such pricing competition next year? Are expected to be more severe. The second question is on the supply chain management. As Kevin mentioned in the briefing, there exist supply chain uncertainties. Could you please clarify what's the key bottleneck for now? And as the coffee related policy is changing a lot recently, What is the expected impact on the auto production in the next several months? Thank you.
Thank you, Olivia. Yes, let me take your question. Your first question about the price cut From Tesla side, actually, we see a little impact on our order flow because our products right now, And we would expect the same kind of situation in next year. So Yes, we still have a strong confidence that in this industry turmoil will continue to lead. For your second question, about the supply chain, yes, of course.
We are glad to see the new COVID policy that ultimately with the pandemic will resolve, actually the supply chain will back to normal. But as we should all know that for the next two, three months, based on the Trend we see in other foreign countries, once the policy change, we may see here and there the manpower shortages. Right now, we already see some of these kind of manpower shortages impact our production, especially in our suppliers' side. So we are working closely with our supply chain partners, try to mitigate all these risks and we even start to prepare some of the workforce by ourselves, whenever there is a shortage, we'll send to the workforce to help our supply partners.
Got it. That's very clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question will come from Ming Hsun Lee with Bank of America, please go ahead.
[Foreign language]
My first question is regarding your decision to make silicon carbide by yourself and com-compared to your peers. Some choose to build the internal capacity for battery. Some decide to design chips by themselves. Why is the decision is made for this capacity build? Thank you.
Thank you, Ming. This is Kevin. Let me take this question. Actually just to clarify we are not the in Suzhou, not manufacturing the silicon carbide chipset. Actually we're making the power drive module with the chipset. Why we are choose to design our own power module? It's because the power module is closely integrated into our five-in-one electric motors and our three-in-one electric motors. Therefore the thermal solution and the size of this module are very important for our competitiveness and energy efficiency. That's why we choose to build this module by our design and build these modules by ourselves. Just to clarify.
Yeah, thank you, Kevin. Yeah, my second question, the new energy vehicle policy will change in Shanghai in 2023. Could you remind us what is the current contribution from Shanghai area? How do you see the impact after the policy change? Besides that, will you speed up your battery EV launch to in order to make the potential order loss as the policy change?
[Foreign language] 附 赠 在 我 的 这 个 提 问 ， 就 是 ， 关 于 这 个 上 海 绿 牌 政 策 的 这 个 明 后 改 变 ， 想 了 解 一 下 现 在 的 话 ， 上 海 大 概 占 我 们 的 这 个 订 单 大 概 多 少 ？ 我 们 预 计 这 个 policy change 对 我 们 的 订 单 会 有 什 么 样 的 影 响 ？ 我 们 是 不 是 也 是 要 加 速 或 尽 快 上 我 们 这 个 纯 电 车 去 赶 这 个 因 为 我 们 这 个 就 是 真 正 在 这 个 上 海 地 区 的 一 个 销 量 可 能 会 有 一 些 影 响 。 谢 谢 。
Thank you. Shanghai account for 6%-5% of our sales volume. Yeah. Of course the policy change of course will have some impact on our sales in Shanghai. Actually as we should all know, most of the Li Auto customer are not buying a new car, they are kind of upgrading their car. In theory, they already have the car plate. Therefore we are actively working with Shanghai, our Shanghai team to build a new sales strategy for next year, yeah, to mitigate the impact of this policy change. Again, overall Shanghai is only like 6% of our sales total volume. Yeah. About the BEV, actually just now Li Xiang already disclosed that next year we're going to have a launch of our first BEV car, yeah.
[Foreign language] 谢 谢 everyone, 管 理 层.
As a reminder, please first ask your question in Chinese and then translate into English. Our next question will come from Xu Yingbo with CITICS. Please go ahead.
[Foreign language] 好，感谢管理层，我有两个问题。第一个呢，是关于理想 ONE 的拨备减值对于成本端的大概接近半个月的一个影响。想问一下这部分计提是基于一个什么样的原则？对一个多大规模的这个 ONE 进行的计提，后续生产出来的 ONE 还有没有潜在的成本？第二个问题呢，我一并提问，就是，我们最近看到李 Xiang 提到的关于矩阵型的组织很有前瞻性，能不能讲更多？
My first question is about Li ONE has cut some cost, CNY 800 million cost. What is the principle for this cost? How can we expect for the future potential cost of produced ONE? My second question is about matrix organization, could you please talk about more about that? Thank you.
I will take your provision question. This is Johnny. For this provision, it's already said to the raw materials, which means that the parts are already in our inventory or the purchase commitment we made to our suppliers.
Inventory and parts of commitment. We don't plan to make it into vehicles in the future. The provision was based on the lower of cost and the net realizable value based on our estimate and negotiation with the vendors. It's an estimate. When I finally realized in the next two quarters, there will be some minor adjustment to the final amount comparing with quarterly growth margin is not very significant. Yeah.
Second question, I think Xiang Li will take.
Actually, since we founded Li Auto, we've always dreamed of becoming a 1 trillion-dollar or 1 trillion RMB company. As you can see, next year, we're expecting to become a 100 billion RMB company already. Personally, I have never built a company from zero to one, a 100 billion dollar company from scratch. Most of my colleagues have not had that experience either. Most of my colleagues, either they come from companies that are smaller than that, or they come from companies that became that large years ago, or they work off of a remote office that's not headquartered in China. We have seen this issue a long time ago.
Since 2019, we've been starting to study software and hardware companies that have reached the size of RMB 1 trillion very, very deeply to see how they manage their business at different stages and what we can learn from them. One thing in common that we've seen is that they've all transformed to a matrix organization when they reach the level of about RMB 10 billion. For Li Auto, when we started from zero to one, speed was efficiency. Speed meant everything. But as time went on, we saw that in a very long value chain where quality and efficiency is very important. In our one to 10 stage, quality is efficiency.
A successful enterprise will need to be able to, for their internal purposes, will need to have a very robust planning, perception, execution process. For their customers, they need very strong R&D, strong product, sales, and services. The matrix organization was the only way to manage this entire process end to end. To make an analogy, the horizontal teams make sure that they built the roads, they maintain the roads, the roads are good to run for vehicles. The vertical teams are the ones that build cars, maintain the fleet and make sure the cars run smoothly on the road. These cars on the well-built and maintained roads are responsible for delivering good services and products to our consumers, which forms a very healthy cycle.
We first started piloting this thought in what we call IPD, integrated product development. The process has actually been validated by the success of Li L9, Li L8, and Li L7, where you might have seen the success of the Li ONE which, you know, in certain view could be a coincidence. Through the application of IPD, we've made that a certainty so that we can replicate the success with our current and ongoing future product development. We are now in the process of applying our pilot process on a much larger scale to make sure that our company can continue to turn out successful products and services to our customers.
Our last question will come from Jing Chang with CICC. Please go ahead.
My first question is about the OpEx. We can see that in the first quarter, our R&D and selling expense increased to CNY 1.8 billion from CNY 0.5 billion. It historically was high. Can you give us more guidance on next year's expense ratio? Considering that next year we will have a brand new BEV platform model on the market and a more complex, complicated and a more channel networks layout. In addition, in terms of R&D, which parts will we do mainly to our in-house research?
Hello, Chang. This is Johnny. I will take your first question about R&D expenses. This year's R&D expenses will adjust as we guided, will be around $1 billion, which is RMB 7 billion for the whole year. It's as expected. For next year, currently, we see over RMB 10 billion-RMB 12 billion, depending on our final decision on some investment, will start next year or in 2024. It will be, yeah, RMB 10 billion-RMB 12 billion for next year. Yeah.
If we look back to 2020 until now, R&D spending mostly fall into three areas. The first area is product development, which you see similar exercises in traditional car OEMs. The second one is technological platforms, including our REV platform, our high voltage BEV platform, our smart space platform, autonomous driving platform. These are shared platforms that all of our vehicles use. The platformization allow us to maximize cost, or the cost efficiency, R&D efficiency and user experience and make sure they're consistent across all products of our company. The third one is new and fast-growing is our system development, which includes supercomputing, the supercomputing platform, cloud computing platform, and our IT infrastructure.
These are very long-term but crucial investments for our company. In terms of organization, the product and technological platforms are run by Mr. Ma Donghui, and system development is run by our CTO, Xie Yan. In terms of spending level, we spend the most today in technical platforms, followed by product and then thirdly system infrastructure. Going forward, we expect to be seeing more spending in system and infrastructure, which might eventually overtake technological infrastructure because we think in the longest term, the most crucial investment or a competitive advantage lies in our system and infrastructure capabilities. My second question is about product design and planning. Aiming at the family car market segment, how can we achieve greater product differentiation?
In addition to the different models such as SUV or MPV and also different number of seats. What can we looking forward to to get a greater differentiation? Our philosophy is the same as before. We still believe that price and seat configuration is the best way to segment the market. This has been partly tested by the success of L9 and L8 and seven, which is soon to start delivery. In that these three cars actually have attracted three very different user groups. If you look at L9, it's pretty much attracted premium car buyers at the same price point or even higher than the current price level of L9.
L8 pretty perfectly replaced Li ONE and kind of shares a very similar customer base as Li ONE. L7 has been attracting a lot of young family users aged between 25 and 35. As you can see, pricing and seat arrangements have allowed us to very efficiently cover the market in different user groups. There have even been some surprises, in the case of L7, where we've been able to tap into new age groups that we hadn't, we weren't expecting before.
As we are reaching the end of our conference call, I'd like to turn the call back over to the company for closing remarks. Ms. Janet Zhang, please go ahead.
Thank you once again for joining us today. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact Li Auto's Investor Relations team. That's all for today. Thank you and have a good weekend.
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.