Produced by ZhiNeng Auto
On September 16, Leapmotor held its 2026 Technology Day in Huzhou. Themed "Confidence", the event showcased the LEAP 5.0 vehicle architecture, along with three core technologies: LWM (Large World Model) intelligent driving, MM-i multi-mode hybrid electric drive, and CTC 3.0 high- and low-voltage integrated battery. It also featured reserves in embodied intelligent robots (which Leapmotor is developing but not yet ready to unveil) and automotive optics.
Let's review the details together and then take a look at the latest battery improvements.
Note: Specific details will be published later on ZhiNeng Tech; this article serves as an overview.
Part 1: Technology Day, Leapmotor's Technological Foundation
LEAP 5.0 is Leapmotor's fifth-generation architecture, divided into physical and electronic components. The initial design concept follows Xiaomi's design approach. Regarding the completely flat floor and many other design considerations, Xiaomi has a complete set of ideas, and Leapmotor believes it can achieve this as well.
The physical part features three-dimensional expansion along the X, Y, and Z axes:
◎ A super-integrated air conditioning unit combined with a rear-mounted powertrain increases the cabin length by 19%;
◎ Vertical shock absorber layout with miniaturized shock absorber towers increases the front-row legroom width by 37.5%.
◎ A completely flat low floor combined with an integrated smart pop-up roof increases the cabin height by 63.7%. Leapmotor can also build this kind of roof!
The combined result of these three expansions yields a "space efficiency ratio" of over 100%. This architecture will first be applied to Leapmotor's second brand, with the product debuting in 2027.
The "space efficiency ratio" is not an industry-standard metric; how it is measured and what it is compared to will need to be calculated once the mass-produced vehicles are released.
Following electrification, mechanical components such as the air conditioning system, powertrain, and shock absorbers are no longer constrained by the engine compartment layout. Their positions can be rearranged, and the saved space is returned to the passengers.
This can serve as a complete design concept for an "RV" (recreational vehicle), offering you more choices!
The electronic part features the Four-Leaf Clover 5.0 central domain controller architecture, which includes a vehicle-wide 48V power supply, vehicle-wide Ethernet, and a vehicle-cloud AgentOS. The central controller makes decisions, while the other domain controllers are only responsible for execution, reducing the total vehicle wiring harness to under 500 meters.
Under the same power conditions, increasing the voltage to 48V (four times higher than 12V) reduces the current. Consequently, the cross-sectional area of the wiring harness and transmission losses decrease, allowing the wiring harness to be halved in weight. This is a prerequisite for the chassis-by-wire, thermal management, pop-up roof mechanisms, and high-power electrical appliances inside the vehicle.
The vehicle-wide Ethernet addresses the issue of data rate. Cameras, the cockpit, advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), and OTA (Over-The-Air) updates all share the same channel, as the CAN (Controller Area Network) bus cannot handle such bandwidth.
In terms of intelligent driving, the LWM does not rely on BEV (Bird's Eye View) representations or a massive amount of rule-based code, and can be deployed on computing platforms with 200 TOPS, 640 TOPS, and 1280 TOPS.
Leapmotor has committed to providing free upgrades for the 350,000 delivered LiDAR-equipped vehicles, rolling out in batches starting in the first quarter of 2027. High-level intelligent driving will be extended to the A10 model, priced under CNY 100,000.
The MM-i multi-mode hybrid electric drive allows the generator to participate in driving under certain operating conditions. Equipped with coaxial dual electromagnetic clutches and intelligent dual-motor control, it covers pure electric, series, parallel, and engine direct-drive modes.
The system has a peak power of 206 kW, a total weight of 106 kg, and a width of 313 mm. It is 40% lighter, 25% smaller in volume, and delivers 28% more power than competitors in the same class, with the goal of covering vehicle segments from A0 to D.
Leapmotor has developed extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs) since 2022 and has accumulated seven models so far. This time, it officially enters the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) track.
These items cover space, data, intelligent driving, and powertrain. The CTC 3.0 moves the position further down. It is about power supply.
Part 2: Did Leapmotor Eliminate the Low-Voltage Battery?
A battery electric vehicle (BEV) carries a traction battery with tens or even over a hundred kilowatt-hours of energy, and generally requires a 12V or 48V small battery. The reason is that low-voltage loads cannot directly use high voltage. Door unlocking, lighting, communication modules, various controllers, and some sensors all operate on the low-voltage system.
The process of waking the vehicle from sleep is fixed. The low-voltage power supply first powers the BMS (Battery Management System) and controllers, which then control the closure of the high-voltage contactors to connect the traction battery.
This sequence determines that the low-voltage battery is the first link in the vehicle's wake-up chain. Even if the traction battery still has 80% charge, if the 12V battery is depleted, the car still cannot unlock its doors or start up.
This kind of failure is hard for car owners to understand, as the car clearly has power. Leapmotor's approach this time is to completely remove this small battery.
What is interesting this time is the open-sourcing. Actually, hardware designs are visible to everyone; open-sourcing is a concept more related to software or patents. Perhaps Leapmotor hopes more players will adopt it together.
After the integration of high- and low-voltage batteries, there are no longer independent components on the low-voltage side.
The low-voltage unit is integrated into the traction battery pack, using the same specification cells and the same level of protection as the high-voltage part, sharing thermal management and energy distribution.
The available low-voltage power capacity is increased by 7 times. This is achieved by designing the low-voltage battery according to the lifespan of the high-voltage battery, making it maintenance-free for life. First owners can also receive a lifetime dual warranty for both high- and low-voltage systems, cumulatively saving over CNY 2,000 in replacement and maintenance costs.
The supporting component is an 11-in-1 integrated domain control BMS, which performs chip-level fusion and hardware board-level integration, while also handling cross-domain edge computing and state-of-health perception.
Leapmotor announced that it will open-source patents related to high- and low-voltage integration to the entire industry. According to their calculations, if this technology is widely adopted in the industry, it could reduce the use and disposal of over a million lead-acid batteries annually.
Eliminating one battery does not save much money. The industry position gained through open-sourcing is worth much more than that CNY 2,000.
Removing a battery sounds like a subtraction. However, it affects the boundaries of the entire vehicle's power supply system.
The original 12V battery was an independent component that could be procured, installed, and replaced separately; replacing a faulty one would cost a few hundred CNY. After integration, the low-voltage unit becomes part of the traction battery system and must be designed together with the cells, enclosure, thermal management, BMS, and the vehicle's overall energy management system.
A larger capacity does not mean static power consumption can be ignored. If a controller in the vehicle wakes up abnormally or the quiescent current is excessive, a larger capacity merely delays the time until the battery is depleted.
Sleep strategies, wake-up logic, and load management still need to be implemented.
Regarding maintenance and lifespan, with the low-voltage unit integrated into the structured battery pack, after a single-point failure, whether to replace the low-voltage module individually, disassemble the pack for repair, or replace the entire pack makes a huge difference in cost. The cost of a single full-pack replacement could consume all the low-voltage battery savings accumulated over the previous decade or more in one go.
The low-voltage side handles frequent shallow charge-discharge cycles and long-term standby, while the high-voltage side undertakes high-power cycles such as acceleration, regenerative braking, and fast charging. The aging rhythms under these two operating conditions are different.
How to manage them separately after using the same specification cells and sharing thermal management is a question the BMS needs to answer.
Summary
We will carefully examine each part in the future to see exactly how complete Leapmotor's technologies are. The architecture from the Technology Day will not be fully revealed until 2027.