In the brutal elimination race of the Chinese auto market, how does Leapmotor create "good products that ordinary people can afford"?

In 2024, the elimination stage in China's new energy vehicle industry entered a "bloody moment": the price war intensified, escalating from a "slow - cut approach" to a "desperate self - amputation". Lidar, urban NOA, and ultra - fast charging technology became the chips on the table in the arms race. After the capital ebbed, the once - glorious "NIO, XPeng, and Li Auto" saw their stock prices fall and carried out layoffs and downsizing. It doesn't matter "how well they live"; the industry consensus first and bluntly points to "survival".

In this intensifying industry competition, a Zhejiang automaker once labeled as "low - key" and "affordable alternative" has emerged as the biggest dark horse. In 2024, Leapmotor rushed into the top three among new car - making forces with an annual delivery volume of nearly 300,000 vehicles, second only to Li Auto and Huawei's Hongmeng Zhixing. More importantly, Leapmotor achieved positive net profit in the fourth quarter of 2024, reaching the goal of single - quarter profitability one year ahead of schedule and becoming the second profitable new car - making force.

The surprises continue. In March 2025, Leapmotor launched its new model, the B10, entering the market with the configuration of "standard lidar in the 120,000 - yuan class + high - level intelligent driving across the whole series". The pre - order volume exceeded 15,000 vehicles within one hour of pre - sale, demonstrating strong market competitiveness. Some media commented that "Leapmotor is on a rampage". However, Zhu Jiangming remained calm. In his view, the strong sales of the B10 are an inevitable result of Leapmotor's years of technological innovation and accumulation.

"Leapmotor's logic is very simple - whether it's a luxury product or a quality product, it should be affordable for the common people." Zhu Jiangming's words hit the current industry dilemma. When the "specification - stacking involution" overdrafts the sincerity of innovation, Leapmotor uses an engineer's thinking to prove that cost reduction does not mean quality reduction but a precise blow to invalid premium.

This "new force that least resembles a new force" is rewriting industry rules with the logic of "technological equality": if high - end configurations are destined to belong to a minority, Leapmotor tries to prove that as long as it persists in self - research and cost - based pricing, everyone can drive an "affordable Porsche". When the industry is caught in involution and exaggeration, Leapmotor chooses to return to the essence of car - making - using technological innovation to keep performance iterating continuously and squeezing out the premium.

The Underlying Logic of "Luxury Equality"

Leapmotor is using the hard power of technological innovation to tear off the industry label of "luxury means premium" and redefine "luxury equality" to achieve the popularization of high - end performance. Zhu Jiangming said bluntly in an interview: "We hope to break the unspoken rule that luxury brands should have a premium. Customers choose Leapmotor not because they can't afford a Mercedes or a Porsche, but because they are rational enough to choose to get the same quality at a more reasonable price."

This logic is vividly reflected in Leapmotor's product matrix. Take the new Leapmotor B10 as an example. It entered the market with the subversive configuration of "standard lidar in the 120,000 - yuan class + high - level intelligent driving across the whole series", and the pre - order volume exceeded 15,000 vehicles within one hour of pre - sale. Zhu Jiangming revealed that the high - level intelligent driving solution of the B10 uses a self - developed central domain controller and an integrated electronic and electrical architecture, and is equipped with Hesai Technology's ATX ultra - long - range lidar and Qualcomm Snapdragon 8650 intelligent driving chip. Being the first to adopt these technologies gave Leapmotor a time - difference advantage, allowing users to obtain a complete intelligent driving ecosystem supporting high - speed NOA and automatic parking at only one - third of the cost of competitors' lidar models. In this way, Leapmotor truly realizes "building cars with the logic of the electronics industry" - performance is upgraded without a cost increase.

In Zhu Jiangming's view, the luxury perceived by users lies in the lack of shortcomings in charging speed, cruising range, and intelligent experience, rather than the psychological premium brought by the logo.

This practice of "technological equality" is also reflected in the C - series models. The 150,000 - yuan class Leapmotor C16 uses the same 800 - volt silicon carbide high - voltage platform as 300,000 - yuan class models, with cruising range and charging efficiency comparable to high - end models. Zhu Jiangming emphasized: "The luxury perceived by users is not the price tag but the actual cost - performance ratio. Among Leapmotor owners, there are a large number of additional purchases by BBA users, which is a victory for rational consumption."

Neither "The Xiaomi of the Auto Industry" nor "The Uniqlo of the Auto Industry"

The industry often compares Leapmotor to "the Xiaomi of the auto industry" or "the Uniqlo of the auto industry", but in terms of its development path, Leapmotor may be "unlike anyone else".

Different from Xiaomi, which initially broke through with cost - effectiveness and later shifted to high - end, Leapmotor has adopted a cost - based pricing strategy since its establishment. Although its entire vehicle lineup covers the 100,000 - 300,000 - yuan range, it achieves extreme cost compression through "self - developed technology + rapid iteration + scale sharing". From this perspective, Leapmotor is closer to the role of a "technological popularizer" - bringing cutting - edge technologies to lower - priced models. The so - called high - end and luxury do not simply mean high prices but rather affordable prices on the premise of high quality.

"Quality is the prerequisite. Only with quality can there be sales, and the two are complementary." Zhu Jiangming said bluntly. After the launch of the B10, Leapmotor needs to increase the scale of the B - series on the one hand and achieve a rapid annual - model iteration for the C - series products in the second quarter of 2025 on the other hand. "More competitive cruising range and a higher degree of intelligence," Zhu Jiangming said, "this is a battle we must win."

Uniqlo's "ever - green basic style" model has similarities with Leapmotor, but the core is quite different. Uniqlo reduces personalized costs through standardized design, while Leapmotor achieves "high - configuration at low prices + diverse combinations" through platformization. Based on Leapmotor's modular platform, the parts commonality rate of its C - platform models exceeds 80%, and the cost reduction is obvious.

This strategy precisely hits the needs of young families and rational consumers. Taking the user profile of the C16 as an example, 70% of the owners are additional purchasers from joint - venture or luxury brands, and 50% are replacement users. "They no longer pay for brand premiums but pursue the actual cost - performance ratio," Zhu Jiangming summarized.

How to Build a Technological Moat

In 2024, Leapmotor's annual delivery volume was close to 300,000 vehicles, making it the "dark horse of the year among new car - making forces" and a typical representative of those who "make money quietly" in the eyes of the outside world. The industry then began to compare Leapmotor with the "top students" BYD and Li Auto. However, compared with BYD's scale advantage and Li Auto's hit - product logic, Leapmotor has taken a completely different path of progress - building its own moat through the differentiated path of "full - domain self - research + platform - based design".

On the one hand, Leapmotor does not completely rely on scale advantages but achieves "high profit margins with a small scale" through technological innovation. The proportion of self - developed and self - manufactured components in the vehicle cost is 65%, covering core components such as battery packs, electric drives, intelligent driving, cockpits, and electronic architectures. It even includes traditional outsourced parts such as car lights and electronic door handles in its self - research system. Taking car lights as an example, after self - research, the BOM cost per set is reduced to 70% of the industry average. After integrating the electronic door handle into the domain controller through self - research, Leapmotor can save more than 100 yuan per vehicle.

"These costs can only be saved through full - domain self - research, and only full - domain self - research can quickly make adjustments according to actual needs," Zhu Jiangming said. "Although these are just small innovations, continuous small accumulations can bring users a perception of a 30,000 - yuan cost reduction."

On the other hand, although it conducts full - domain self - research, Leapmotor has long controlled its R & D expense ratio at 7% - 10%, far lower than the generally over 15% level of NIO, XPeng, and Li Auto. The core reason behind this is Leapmotor's platform - based strategy. Different models can share a large number of parts, greatly improving the commonality of parts and further reducing costs through the scale effect. Currently, Leapmotor has four series, A, B, C, and D, covering four price ranges: 60,000 - 100,000 yuan, 100,000 - 150,000 yuan, 150,000 - 200,000 yuan, and 200,000 - 300,000 yuan. It is expected to launch about thirteen or fourteen models, but it has achieved a truly "centralized integrated electronic and electrical architecture", significantly reducing the R & D cost per model.

"This is one of Leapmotor's major features, achieving the highest level of integration," Zhu Jiangming said. "Our LEAP 3.0 architecture integrates all domain controls such as the cockpit domain, intelligent driving domain, power domain, and body domain into one box, which is very concise." Currently, Leapmotor's self - developed architecture has entered the LEAP 3.5 technical architecture. The number of electronic controllers has decreased from 28 to 22, and the wiring harness has been shortened from 1,500 meters to less than 1,000 meters, which is the shortest in the industry.

Leapmotor has proved through practice that cost reduction does not mean quality reduction but a precise blow to invalid premium. Looking back at Leapmotor's rise, it is essentially a victory of "engineer thinking" - this gene not only belongs to Leapmotor but is also deeply rooted in the innovation and entrepreneurship soil of Hangzhou.

In this land, another group of "technological ascetics" are subverting the industry with a similar logic. DeepSeek has broken the US monopoly on AI discourse power with its open - source strategy and cost advantages. Unitree Robotics adheres to a full - stack self - research strategy, achieving a localization rate of over 90% for core components such as motors, reducers, controllers, and lidars, and making quadruped robots available at the "industry's lowest price". Their common feature is that they do not chase after trends or create concepts but use underlying technological innovation to turn cutting - edge technologies into popular tools.

This victory of "engineer thinking" may be defining a new paradigm for China's hard - tech: making technology the core engine and popularization the highest - level luxury.