Leapmotor C01 with CTC battery unveiled in China

11 May 2022

China - the world of EV wonders and breakneck technological progress. New EVs being announced and revealed every day, new companies are venturing into the EV market every week and many of them disappear quietly after a short spell in the spotlight. Leapmotor is not one of those companies though, it has been around since 2015 and last year alone delivered 43,748 all-electric cars - that’s only 2,000 cars shy of General Motors and 4 times more than Toyota managed to sell in the same time. Yes yes, we know - Toyota is late to the race and will catch up but it still puts the Leapmotor’s production numbers in perspective.

Leapmotor C01 now managed to beat other automakers and release the first car with Cell To Chassis battery technology, in the process reducing the number of components required for such setup by 20% and weight by 15kg.

The arrangement meant 14.5% more space for the battery itself - bigger battery, larger range. C01 clearly takes advantage of that technology with the range going all the way to 717km according to the manufacturer, there will be 4 options available with 630km, 606km and 500km joining the top version. We don’t know the battery capacity at this stage for either of the options.

Single-motor version of the C01 comes with 200kW (268hp) and torque figures ranging from 300Nm (222lb-ft) to 500Nm (369lb-ft). There is a twin-motor 4WD version as well with two of the same motors giving 400kW (536hp) of power with combined torque of 720Nm (531lb-ft). That version can accelerate from 0 to 100kmh in 3.66 seconds.

The electric motors are oil cooled, weigh 85kg and were designed to last 1,000,000 kilometers. The car itself is not a small sedan - it’s over 5 meters long, 1.9 meter wide and only 1.5 meter tall with a wheelbase of 2.93 meters, it is 10cm longer than Tesla Model S for comparison.

The interior screens and entire infotainment system is run by a Snapdragon 8155 processor, the car has a Face ID system that allows it to store driver’s habits and it can start and switch off without any interaction - just by recognizing the driver.

The C01 has an Android virtual machine that allows integration of many popular apps, the car can be controlled with OPPO and Apple products including Siri voice commands. Leapmotor Pilot takes care of driving assistance with no less than 28 sensors and 23 functions available with the NAP piloting system being a subscription service. Drivers will be able to hand over the control to the car during city and highway driving and the car will be able to park itself remotely as well.

The C01 comes with in-house designed chips with combined computing power of 8.4 TOPS, slightly short of Tesla Model S and its claimed 10.28 TOPS. The CEO of Leapmotor, however, promised that from 2024 Leapmotor will use NVIDIA Orin-X chips.

It sounds like a lot of a car with a lot of technology thrown in for good measure. What’s even better is the pricing, Leapmotor is very aggressive when it comes to positioning its products in the market and the C01 will start at RMB180,000 ($26,000 or £21,650 or €25,370) for the base version with the price going all the way to RMB270,000 ($40,200 or £32,400 or €38,000) for the twin-motor 4WD option.

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