"Leap is to be the Uniqlo of the automotive industry."
In his opinion, Uniqlo may be a little more expensive than ordinary products, but the fabric, texture, and design will also be better. As a typical Zhejiang businessman, Zhu Jiangming has many Zhejiang entrepreneurs who have always adhered to the habit of starting a business - low-key and simple, but also has the genes of Zhejiang businessmen who are good at management and the concept of focusing on long-termism. In 2015, Zhu Jiangming was 48 years old when he founded Leapmotor, and in China, there are not many well-known entrepreneurs who start their own businesses after the age of 40 and achieve great success, Liu Chuanzhi, Zong Qinghou, Ren Zhengfei and Zhu Jiangming are considered a generation.
Zhu Jiangming's typical Zhejiang businessman personality has also created the style of Leapmotor: compared with the "blockbuster" of other new car-making forces, he is more inclined to "make a fortune with a muffled voice".
In Zhu Jiangming's view, unlike Uniqlo's "cost performance", Leapmotor should do a "price-to-price ratio" - the product should be infinitely closer to Porsche, but it still sells the price of Passat.
In addition to the price-quality ratio, it is also necessary to make the platform thorough and stronger, focusing on global self-development, and the core components (batteries, electric drives, intelligent driving, cockpits, etc.) that exceed 60% of the vehicle cost are developed and manufactured by Leapmotor itself. It is based on this logic that Zhu Jiangming set a starting price of 155,800 yuan for the Leap C16 and a ceiling price of no more than 185,800 yuan for the top configuration.
On June 30, Leapmotor announced that 5,208 units of Leapmotor C16 were set for 48 hours after its launch, with 97% of the medium and high configurations (premium version & intelligent driving version), 30% of the intelligent driving version, and 95% of the fully equipped optional packages.
Zhu Jiangming once said: "Building a car is a long-distance race, and Zero Run wants to be the turtle in the tortoise and rabbit race." In the "Hunger Games", which requires the founder to have a big heart that balances rationality and madness, the tortoise of Zero Run has shown signs of surpassing the rabbit.
The second entrepreneurship of "technology control".
Compared with the identity of an entrepreneur, Zhu Jiangming's most prominent label has always been an engineer. Whether it was in Dahua at the beginning, or now Zerorun.
In 1987, Zhu Jiangming was admitted to Zhejiang University to study radio. As a sophomore, he became a celebrity at school because he built a television set by himself. This television set eventually inspired him to pursue an entrepreneurial path.
After graduation, 26-year-old Zhu Jiangming took 5,000 yuan and started from scratch with his friend Fu Liquan to establish Dahua Co., Ltd., engaged in the research and development and sales of dispatching communication equipment. In 1999, dispatching communications had a total market share of only 100 million yuan in the country, and Zhu Jiangming was obviously not satisfied with this market. At that time, they developed a remote image monitoring system for the power system, and entered the security field by mistake, but they did not expect to be the second in the global industry, second only to Hikvision, with a market value of 90 billion yuan.
The technology-driven business logic allows Zhu Jiangming and Dahua to achieve each other, and also allows Zhu Jiangming to see the opportunity to enter the field of car manufacturing.
In 2015, when Zhu Jiangming was traveling in Spain, he accidentally saw several Renault electric cars parked in a high-end community in Spain. He realized that the new energy vehicle industry contains huge opportunities and market space, and more importantly, Dahua's technology accumulation in intelligent transportation and electronic equipment and self-developed software and hardware can be applied to automobiles, which gives him an advantage over many new car-making forces and even traditional car companies.
Because of this, as a member of the new car-making force, Leapmotor itself has some differences from its peers, neither the background of Internet car-making that was already unconventional at that time, nor the transformation of traditional car-making companies in the new era, but a new car brand with IT technology genes.
"Can't see" vs. "Hard to do"
Before Leapmotor C16, no one would have expected that some companies would sell a new 6-seater SUV product that supports 800V high-voltage fast charging in the whole area, the only one with a top configuration of less than 200,000 lidars, a rear ceiling screen, and an 8295 chip at this price. In Zhu Jiangming's view, the lack of products like Leap C16 on the market is not because others can't see it, but because it is difficult to do.
——The difficulty lies in self-research and cost reduction.
In December 2023, on the occasion of the 8th anniversary of the establishment of Leapmotor, Zhu Jiangming used an open letter to review the development process of Leapmotor from 0 to 1. Zhu Jiangming wrote: "It took us three years for the first 100,000 units, the second 100,000 units to one year, and the third 100,000 units in less than half a year, which fully reflects the acceleration of the development of Leaprun." ”
Under Zhu Jiangming's insistence, Leapmotor has successfully developed six core technologies, including vehicle architecture, electronic and electrical architecture, intelligent battery, intelligent electric drive, intelligent cockpit, and intelligent driving, and has become the first new domestic force and the second in the world to have complete independent research and development capabilities for intelligent electric vehicles, with 60% of the core components manufactured by itself.
"Whether it's hardware or algorithms, except for chips, we do it all ourselves. Intelligent driving and cockpit, we will definitely do it 100% ourselves. Zhu Jiangming once said.
On the C16 model announced this time, 60%-70% of the components are self-developed, and self-development accounts for more than 70% of the BOM cost. Even if it is not a self-developed core component, C16 can also make the best use of things, in the use of functional parts, unlike other car companies 8295 chip is only used for intelligent cockpit, through technology development, so that a 8295 chip can handle cockpit functions at the same time, intelligent driving, sound adjustment and 360-degree surround view function, these functions originally require multiple chips to achieve, Leap through a chip to achieve.
This allows the cost of Leap's bicycle to be reduced to 126,000 yuan, and according to BYD's 2023 financial report data, its bicycle cost is only 123,000 yuan.
"Because this is how the cost in the security market is fought out little by little, you do the ultimate, others can't fight, you win."
Go to a bigger market at a lower cost
Under the control of costs, it is more advantageous for enterprises to go to the big market.
In Zhu Jiangming's view, the high-end market cares about the brand, service, aesthetics, the capacity is relatively small, the cost control advantage is not obvious, if the scale is large, there are one million vehicles, each car saves one piece, is one million yuan.
This is also an important reason why Leapmotor has been favored by Stellantis Group.
In October 2023, Leapmotor officially entered into a strategic partnership with Stellantis Group. Stellantis Group plans to invest approximately €1.5 billion in Leapmotor to acquire approximately 21% of Leapmotor's shares, becoming the largest shareholder of Leapmotor and acquiring two board seats. At the same time, one of the most important aspects of the cooperation between the two parties is the establishment of a new joint venture called "Leaprun International", in which Stellantis and Leaprun will hold a 51%:49% stake.
Unlike the previous model in which foreign companies provided technical and management experience, and Chinese companies provided market access and localization support, Leapmotor International is the first reverse joint venture in China's automotive industry.
Leapmotor has become an exporter of technology and will enter the global consumer vision under the name of the Leapmotor brand. By leveraging Stellantis' overseas influence, Leapmotor will accelerate the speed of its products going overseas, thereby promoting Leapmotor's technological innovation and further reducing costs, and continuously enhancing Leapmotor's self-hematopoietic ability.
For the next development, Zhu Jiangming revealed that Leaprun's product planning also includes A series, B series, D series and so on. Considering the current market demand, after this year's C series, the first B series model of 10-150,000 yuan will be launched. In October this year, Leapmotor will exhibit the first car of the B series at the French Motor Show, which is an SUV.
At the end of the launch conference of Leap C16, Zhu Jiangming threw out another gimmick, he planned to choose a suitable time, and like Zhou Hongyi, he auctioned off his three luxury cars.
"Then I drove the C16 wholeheartedly until the next 6-seater (product) of the Leap D series came out." Zhu Jiangming said.