2019 New Car Racing Track first press conference, ignited by Leapmotor

On January 3rd at 18:00, Leapmotor hosted a press conference at the Water Cube in Beijing, announcing the official launch of the Leapmotor S01.

Leapmotor S01

Almost all new car companies are crowding into the SUV market, but there are also some players who deviate from the mainstream, such as Byton and Leapmotor.

The Leapmotor S01 is a pure electric coupe, and its fuel vehicle competitors include the Toyota 86 and the Mazda MX-5. Below are the styles of these three cars.

After having a basic impression of its styling, the following are the specific product information. First, let’s talk about the basic parameter of S01.

Next is the price. On November 10th last year, Leapmotor announced that the selling price of S01 with subsidies was 100,000-150,000 yuan at its first flagship center opening ceremony. Below is the selling price announced today.

Other car purchase benefits include Leapmotor’s full set of smart services, including Zero-Worry charging, Zero-Worry service, Zero-Worry intelligence, and a total of 23 lifelong rights.

The S01 is divided into four versions: 380 Standard, 380 Pro, 460 Standard, and 460 Pro. It should be noted that there is no difference between the Standard and Pro versions of S01 in terms of electric drivetrain and battery specifications. The main differences are concentrated in the following few points.

• Leap Pilot hardware and some functions (such as ACC adaptive cruising, etc.)

• Fingerprint recognition unlocking

• 360° panoramic imaging

• Leather steering wheel/seat

• Spectrum variable color atmosphere lights* Memory outside rearview mirror

• Electric adjustable seats

• Electric seats / rearview mirror

Why a Coupe?

After introducing the product information, let’s talk about the strategy of Leading Ideal.

The first question is: why did Leading Ideal choose to make a Coupe?

Based on “electric and intelligent”, three to four years ago when new car companies were founded in China, traditional fuel cars were viewed as competitors, and everyone stood in the trench dug by Tesla, to “accelerate the world’s transition towards sustainable energy”.

When the products started to appear one after another, everybody discovered that from the standpoint of market, product definition, and user experience, everyone made SUVs-compact, small-sized, five-seater, seven-seater…The new car camp found itself in a subtle relationship of both enemies and friends.

The continuous homogenization of so-called “smart electric SUVs” led directly to consumer fatigue. If Leading Ideal were to release another “smart electric SUV” today, the market competition pressure can be imagined.

However, even if positioning the product with a differentiation, the competition within the 100,000-150,000 yuan bracket remains intense, with XPeng G3 and WM EX5 being products that share similar prices.

It should be pointed out that the positioning of the Leading Ideal S01 is indeed “smart toy for young people”, yes, competing with XPeng and WM for users of the same age group.

Can a Coupe work?

Whether a young person’s first smart electric car should be bought from WM, XPeng, Leading Ideal or Tesla, is up to the young people to decide. Below, I will talk about some of Leading Ideal’s considerations for the S01.

Firstly, the powertrain section. Leading Ideal is one of the few companies in the new car camp that invests heavily in R&D. This is backed by Leading Ideal’s R&D genes from its parent company, China’s state-owned automaker Hydrogen Group, and also by Leading Ideal’s management’s appreciation for Tesla. Leading Ideal CEO and former Hydrogen Group CTO Zhu Jiangming himself has a strong technical penchant, and has expressed his admiration for Tesla’s in-house development and vertical integration a few times publicly, and Leading Ideal Vice President Zhao Gang is a Tesla owner himself.

The management’s attention and thinking on industry leaders will affect the development and direction of the company.

For example, in the case of the S01, the powertrain, including the integrated powertrain with motor, transmission and electric control unit, battery Pack that includes module and BMS software and hardware, are all independently developed by Leading Ideal. However, there is a problem here. Tesla’s independent development has become the industry leader, but the basic parameters of the Leading Ideal S01 doesn’t have many surprises.

My understanding is that independent development is the right but difficult way, and all start-ups that choose independent development face unavoidable challenges in the initial stage.Using advanced driving assistance system as an example, many new automakers are facing not the question of whether to develop it themselves or not, but the fact that their advanced driving assistance system, which has taken three years of investment and a lot of financial resources, may not be able to compete with the existing solutions directly integrated by top-tier companies such as Bosch in terms of user experience, reliability, and cost-benefit balance.

Although the self-developed route is correct, it is more difficult, and some new automakers’ driving assistance systems are delayed and have poor product reliability. There are still many technological and engineering challenges ahead, despite the technical and engineering resources from Dahua, Zero Run still cannot let its guard down.

The Real Intelligent Toy

The following details are very interesting. To position it as “a smart toy for young people”, design elements that do not please young people are not acceptable.

First, Coupe, the product is positioned for young people, which will not be discussed further.

Second, the front end. The design of the S01 is highly controversial. Zhe Lun, captain of the Zhe Lun team’s VLOG, said the large mouth was very much like Joker’s in “Batman”. The feeling this front end gives me is very high turnover rate and very differentiated, but evaluations will also be very polarized. The last time I experienced this kind of feeling was from the front end design of the Nio ES8.

Be different and cater to young people.

As for the design, the Coupe is a design that prioritizes visual aesthetics over functionality, sacrificing space for a more streamlined and visually-friendly teardrop-shaped design. Unfortunately, the S01 model is relatively short, and the teardrop design has not been sufficiently developed.

Third, vein recognition unlocking.

What is vein recognition unlocking? It is a more advanced way of unlocking than fingerprint recognition, confirming your identity by recognizing the flow of blood in your veins.

After picking up the car, enter the car and enter the vein pattern through the central control operation, and then you can completely abandon the physical key and do not need to unlock the phone Bluetooth or NFC card because you are the key.

With vein access to the car and face recognition to start the vehicle, it is a seamless user experience if the recognition rate and reliability under different working conditions are done well. Unfortunately, according to Commander Zhe Jun’s words, the experience of the vein recognition unlocking of the S01 he test drove was somewhat unsatisfactory.

(It should be noted that the Commander Zhe Jun test drove the engineering sample car, and many improvements will be made to the final production version.)

For many young people, it is a rigid requirement to appear cool.

The fourth point is the Leap Pilot.

Zhao Gang, the Vice President of Zero Run, who is also a Tesla owner, must know the most critical difference between Model S and Mercedes-Benz S series besides the driving form: Autopilot.

S01 supports whole vehicle OTA, and Zero Run Leap Pilot hardware is as follows:

• 1 front dual camera
• 2 blind spot cameras
• 4 panoramic cameras
• 1 millimeter-wave radar
• 12 ultrasonic sensors
• 1 in-car face recognition camera

Zero Run independently developed a complete set of software and hardware system, including a 77G millimeter-wave radar from Dahua, dual cameras, and even a self-developed AI autonomous driving chip. This vertical integration level even exceeds Tesla.

However, as the saying goes, hardware-software integration is not that simple. NIO delayed its delivery, XPeng and Zero Run today both wrote in small letters that “some functions will be pushed through remote OTA in the future”.

The fifth point is frameless windows + panoramic sunroof + red and black interior + spectrum color-changing atmosphere light.

Frameless windows and panoramic sunroof are self-explanatory, refer to Tesla Model 3.Below is the English Markdown text that preserves the HTML tags and output only the correction and improvement of the translation:

For young people who are attracted to S01, if you want to place an order, be sure to choose Pro. The reason is that the red and black interior and spectrum changing ambient light are standard on the Pro model, while it is not even provided on the standard version.

Why choose Pro? Here is what the red and black interior looks like:

The spectrum changing ambient light is hard to describe in words, but it is obvious that Leapmotor has put a lot of effort into this detail. The ambient light can achieve 100% free color adjustment and has an impressive effect at night.

How to create a smart toy for young people? Young people like novelty and innovation, value intelligence, and are more sensitive to user experience. They also have a desire for X装 (showing off with an item), with these dimensions in mind, Leapmotor has put a lot of effort into making S01. It may not sell very well, but you have to admit that it is a thoughtful product.

But Cuope is still a new brand, what if consumers are not buying into the idea of lifetime free service…. Here is where Leapmotor’s advantages compared to other new automakers come in: it is backed by Dahua’s capital, technology, and talent resources. It has a long enough buffer period to patiently study technology and polish its products.

So the pressure is all on Zhu Jiangming, let’s see how young people choose.

• The first Leapmotor center opened, Zhao Gang hopes that car owners “don’t come if there is nothing to do”* The Evolution of the LI ONE, Zhao Gang’s Confidence

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.