Li Auto aims to become the "Android" of the automotive industry

Author | Chai Xuchen

Editor | Wang Xiaojuan

Li Auto, which has been soaring in scale, has now thrown out even greater ambitions in terms of intelligence.

On March 27, at the 2025 Zhongguancun Forum, Li Auto Chairman Li Xiang showcased the self-developed automotive operating system -- "Li Xiang Star Ring OS," and intends to open source it to the industry, aiming to become the "Android" of the automotive world.

Looking back, the direct motivation for Li Auto's self-developed automotive operating system was the global chip shortage that "choked" the industry in 2020. Since the second half of 2020, the world has faced a structural shortage of chips, with severe delays in chip delivery cycles. Throughout this three-year chip crisis, the entire industry has faced unprecedented challenges.

At that time, as a new force with sales still in the early stages (Li Auto's total sales in 2020 were 33,000 units), Li Auto was at a disadvantage in the allocation of chip supply chain capacity, with very limited chip supply available.

"We were using the AUTOSAR operating system at that time, which holds an absolute dominant position in the industry. If we needed to replace the scarce MCU chips, the adaptation and verification cycle of the operating system and the new chips generally takes more than 6 months, which would result in hundreds of billions in revenue losses for us," Li Xiang said.

Faced with such enormous uncontrollable risks, Li Auto had to consider developing its own operating system.

Li Xiang revealed that in 2021, the company initiated a self-development project for the automotive operating system, starting from scratch, completing solution selection, architecture design, and implementation. Li Auto was quite determined in this direction, investing a team of 200 people in research and development, consuming over a billion in expenses over the years, and finally achieving the first implementation of the self-developed operating system in vehicles last year.

It is understood that "Star Ring OS" has achieved decoupling of software and hardware, allowing for chip adaptation and verification to be completed within four weeks, saving up to 5 months compared to using AUTOSAR. More importantly, it supports the architectures of mainstream automotive-grade chips on the market (Infineon TriCore, Renesas RH850, Horizon, Chipone, open-source RISC-V architecture).

It can be said that Li Auto has made "Star Ring OS" a widely compatible, hardware "universal" base system, no longer choked by chip supply.

Moreover, according to Li Xiang, under the premise of using the same chips and computing units, "Star Ring OS" also surpasses the original system in core performance, safety, and cost efficiency. The improvement in performance directly relates to the user's driving experience and, in the atmosphere of fierce competition in the industry, influences the product competitiveness that automakers care about most.

It should be noted that under the architecture of traditional operating systems, each module in the vehicle operates independently, completing its own tasks and reporting in sequence, which generates considerable delays each time The ideal solution is to achieve deep integration and global collaboration of the entire link of perception - decision - execution through cross-system architecture design, allowing multiple controllers to work together. Li Xiang revealed that this system reduces AI computing power virtualization performance loss by 80% compared to traditional solutions, decreases sensor device access latency by 90%, and lowers storage resource usage by 30%.

Li Xiang stated that "Xinghuan OS" is the true automotive operating system of the AI era, with another major benefit being cost reduction.

With the intelligence of vehicles, more and more smart functions are being added, and each functional domain generally has its own independent sensors and controllers to ensure the performance and manifestation of intelligence. According to the current trend of intelligence, Li Auto has calculated that the demand for AI hardware from various smart functions will double every two years.

In the face of such resource growth pressure, Li Auto is considering merging and sharing computing power for smart vehicle control, intelligent driving, and smart cabin; merging the cameras of intelligent driving and the dashcam. Li Xiang stated that this plan has reduced the overall BOM cost by several billion yuan annually, and software iteration has become more efficient.

The saved costs also provide Li Auto with room to lower prices in the price war.

These preparations are part of Li Auto's "open strategy" to become an AI technology company. In the era of intelligence, cars are transforming from mere transportation tools to artificial intelligence terminals. The automotive industry is about to enter the AGI era, and players face greater changes than in the mobile internet era, with companies like XPeng, Xiaomi, Huawei, and Nio all gearing up.

"A car operating system that can manage all vehicle resources with the highest efficiency and strongest performance is the central hub for the second half of the automotive industry's intelligence and the foundation for advanced intelligent entities."

In the face of opportunities, Li Xiang decided to fully open-source "Xinghuan OS," becoming the first car manufacturer to open-source an automotive operating system. "This can help automotive manufacturers and suppliers save tens of millions or even hundreds of millions in operating system licensing fees each year."

This means that "Xinghuan OS" defines itself as the Android system in mobile phones, as it is precisely because of open-source that Android has achieved a dominant position and scale in today's smart terminal industry.

Clearly, Li Auto also aims to replicate this path, attracting small and medium-sized car companies to join the camp through open-source, forming a self-sustaining ecological alliance. "Closed systems can only amplify coefficients, but open-source can amplify the base. Xinghuan OS can help the automotive industry save 10 billion to 20 billion yuan in redundant R&D resources each year and break the 'black box' technical barriers of closed-source systems, reconstructing the monopoly pattern of international suppliers," Li Xiang stated.

It can be said that Li Auto's open-source strategy is far from mere technical sharing; it is a full-chain layout from supply chain risk control (shortening chip adaptation cycles), industry cost optimization (reducing redundant investments), ecological discourse power competition (setting standards), to industrial collaborative upgrades (domestic technology substitution).

Industry insiders believe that Li Auto's goal is to exchange technological "volume" for ecological "momentum," ultimately mastering core influence similar to Google's over Android and Huawei's over Harmony in the era of smart electric vehicles. This open competition paradigm may reshape the value distribution pattern of the global automotive industry After leading the trends of "refrigerators, color TVs, and large sofas" and the extended-range craze, Li Auto now aims to become the "definer of new competitive rules in the era of smart cars," which may be a part of its strategy to sprint towards becoming an industry giant.

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