Chinese startup Leapmotor introduced a new platform and is already selling it to the West

Chinese automakers continue to seize technological leadership from sluggish Western automakers: EV startup Leapmotor has unveiled its third EV platform in its short history and ready to share it with everyone (of course, for money).

Last week, the German media got the shock of Volkswagen buying a stake in Chinese startup Xpeng and using its platform for its new electric vehicles. A week earlier, Audi and SAIC agreed to jointly develop electric vehicles. In turn, the Geely holding has successfully introduced the European brands Polestar, Volvo and smart to the SEA platform. Well, today the young company Leapmotor introduced the new Leap 3.0 platform and is already negotiating with two foreign companies to sell it.

Founded in 2015 by Chinese electronics engineer Zhu Jiangming, Leapmotor has been in the Chinese market for only four years, and its product line has only four models, but Leapmotor is considered one of the most successful and promising Chinese startups. Leapmotor's sales in the first half of this year were 44,502 electric vehicles, down 14% from January-June 2022, reflecting increased competition and a price war in the Chinese electric vehicle market. Leapmotor announced that it will cut prices for two of its most popular models in August, the C11 platform crossover and C01 sedan.

The Leap 3.0 platform is intended for the company's future electric vehicles: its first carrier will be a model with a factory index B11, which will premiere in September at the Munich Motor Show. A feature of the new platform is a high degree of integration of electronic and electrical components, which promises a lower cost than competitors. Leapmotor itself makes chips based on Qualcomm Snapdragon cores and offers several options for different computing power for both budget electric vehicles and premium ones that have a lot of entertainment equipment and electronic driver assistants on board, up to full autopilot. Of course, software updates are provided «over the air» and all this is said to work «with a whiz».

Leapmotor is keen to sell its new platform to third-party companies that do not have the resources or time to develop their own. Leapmotor can both license its platform and make an entire electric car for a client, and even set up its production at its own factory in Jinhua City (Zhejiang Province). Meanwhile, as early as 2025, according to Reuters, Leapmotor plans to introduce the next generation platform! Western automakers can only dream of such a pace of evolution.