Leapmotor wants to be the "Uniqlo of the automobile industry", and the founder Zhu Jiangming judges that the price war will be fought for three more years

Economic Observer reporter Pu Zhenyu "The price war will definitely continue in the next three years, and the competition will still be as fierce as it is now, because the whole pattern has not yet been determined. The entire process of new energy (industrialization) basically takes three years to complete, and pure fuel vehicles will be reduced to less than 10% after three years, and more hybrid, plug-in hybrid or pure electric models. In the process of full competition, everyone must seize their own position. On June 28, Zhu Jiangming, founder, chairman and CEO of Leapmotor, told the Economic Observer and other media.

As a new car-making force, in addition to the mini car T03, the C10, C11, C01 and the C16 just launched on June 28 are all in the price band of 150,000 yuan, and this market is currently one of the most fierce price war in the new energy vehicle market segment.

Zhu Jiangming said that Leapmotor hopes that the C series products can deepen and penetrate the price band of 150,000 yuan, gain a large market share in this price band, and achieve sales of more than 30,000 units per month. From January to May this year, Leapmotor's sales remained among the top three new car-making forces, and the industry-wide ranking hovered between seventh and ninth. With the launch of the 6-seater SUV Leapmotor C16, Leapmotor expects its sales ranking to move forward.

Why concentrate resources in one price band? Zhu Jiangming explained that this can make the front line of Leap not so long, and the user base is relatively focused, so that the product will be more advantageous as a whole, and then the sales scale can be increased. "Otherwise, we have to do high, and we have to do low, the users are different, the products are different, and the front line will be very long." He said.

The price band of 100,000 to 200,000 yuan

According to Leapmotor's plan, more series of its products in the next two years will be in the price range of 100,000 to 200,000 yuan. In 2025, Leapmotor will launch three models of the B series, with prices ranging from 100,000 to 150,000 yuan. In 2026, Leapmotor may launch three products with a central price of 200,000 yuan.

Talking about the mass market of 100,000 to 200,000 yuan, Zhu Jiangming said that consumers in mature countries are more inclined to rational consumption, that is, for the purpose of rigid demand. The brand positioning of Leapmotor is to provide users with higher configuration, better quality, good but not expensive products, no matter how high the gross profit or how large the space, Leapmotor will insist on taking the car as a consumer product of the public, and Leapmotor will want to be the "Uniqlo of the automobile industry".

In the past two years, the attention of automobile consumers to intelligent driving has been rising, but the competition at the level of intelligent driving is more concentrated in the mid-to-high-end market range of more than 200,000 yuan. Therefore, Leapmotor did not have a strong presence in the field of intelligent driving.

Zhu Jiangming said that in the previous stage of Leaprun, more follow-up strategies were adopted in terms of intelligent driving. Starting from 2023, Leapmotor has invested more manpower in the field of intelligent driving, and now has a team of more than 400 intelligent driving, and its overall technical capabilities have gradually moved closer to the first echelon. In 2025, the high-end version of the B series models launched by Leapmotor may be equipped with lidar and high-computing power intelligent driving chips.

For some netizens to position the Leapmotor C16 as a medium and large 6-seater SUV as a choice of "Ping Ideal (referring to the ideal car)", Cao Li, senior vice president of Leap Technology, said: "There is nothing wrong with Ping Ideal Success, our products must be infinitely close to excellent products in terms of performance and product strength, but the concept of price is different, and it is definitely a good thing for Leap to be replaced." ”

As a new EV brand focusing on the mass market, Leapmotor has a wide geographical distribution of target users. Zhu Jiangming said that Leaprun hopes to develop cities without outlets and cities with a certain sales scale in the fourth and fifth tiers at the fastest speed, so as to achieve rapid sinking of channels, and the total number of outlets is planned to increase from about 500 to 800 by the end of this year.

Cost down vs. exposure up

In Zhu Jiangming's view, price is an important advantage of Leaprun. He said that the parts that account for 60% of the cost of Zerorun are self-developed and self-made, which can save part of the cost space and pass the profit to users. On the other hand, 88% of the products on the same platform share the same parts, such as the front and rear lights and dashboards of the C16 and C10.

As the latest model of Leapmotor, the overall price range of the Leapmotor C16, which is positioned as a medium and large SUV, is not much different from that of the Leapmotor C11, which is positioned as a medium-sized SUV, and even the price of the top version of the former is lower.

"The exterior design of this car is so beautiful, and it uses top-level parts, is it necessary to make more money and sell it for more than 200,000 yuan? In fact, Leaprun's products are priced at cost, using our innovative technology and more than 60% of the parts to make their own products, and give the saved (cost) space to users. In this way, our products can be very affordable. Zhu Jiangming said.

Leaprun's cost control is also reflected in Zhu Jiangming's investment philosophy. In recent years, new energy vehicles with an increasingly high level of intelligence have an increasing demand for computing power. Zhu Jiangming believes that both enterprises and governments are now scrambling to build large supercomputing centers, and only a few companies and car companies that can really use computing power to deploy large models, so there will be no shortage of computing power in the future. In this context, Leaprun adheres to asset-light operations and may lease computing power instead of investing in computing power.

Compared with the founders of other new car-making forces, Zhu Jiangming, who has a technical background, has been relatively low-key in marketing. But on June 22, Zhu Jiangming also followed many peers to complete the live broadcast debut, and he experienced the Leap C16 in the live broadcast. After the live broadcast, Zhu Jiangming admitted that he was "not good at expression", and the reason why he was willing to live broadcast was to strengthen contact with users in this way.

At the launch conference of Leapmotor C16, Zhu Jiangming threw out another gimmick, he planned to auction his luxury car according to the script of Zhou Hongyi, the founder of 360 Company.

"I have a Mercedes S, it's been more than ten years, but it's still very new, because I don't use it a lot; There is also a Porsche Cayenne, which is a top-of-the-line eight-cylinder model bought for 1.9 million yuan, and it has been more than ten years; And one is an alpha, maybe six or seven years. I wanted to pick a suitable time to auction off these three cars, and then drive the C16 wholeheartedly until the next 6-seater (product) of the Leapmotor D series comes out. Zhu Jiangming said.