Overseas opportunities, intelligent driving exploration, poker table dynamics... Zero Run's Zhu Jiangming responded to these hot topics.

Leapmotor communication meeting, ZHU Jiangming responds to market hot topics.

“Leapmotor’s overseas sales of 150,000 units this year are still very likely to meet expectations.” On March 26, at a media briefing, Leapmotor Automobile (09863.HK) founder, chairman, and CEO, when being interviewed by First Financial, said. On the same day, Leapmotor officially launched its first globalized model on the brand-new A platform—Leapmotor A10—bringing from in-car to in-car navigation-assisted driving into the under-100,000-yuan market.

As the new-energy carmaker that shipped the most overseas last year, Leapmotor’s export volume last year reached 67,000 units, with nearly 600,000 total vehicle sales for the full year. This year, the company has set a full-year target of one million sales, of which the overseas portion is 150,000 units.

ZHU Jiangming said that changes in the oil market bring both danger and opportunity. From the perspective of global electrification, besides China accelerating, overseas will also accelerate, which provides many opportunities for China’s automotive industry. He said that although the Middle East situation has brought some sales difficulties in certain regions, the rise in oil prices has also made market demand for electric vehicles bigger. Therefore, Leapmotor’s overseas sales of 150,000 units this year are very likely to meet expectations.

ZHU Jiangming said that the second half of the new energy vehicle market must be intelligentization, and the most important is high-level driver-assistance. To reduce investment, Leapmotor’s smart-driving strategy in the early stage has always been a follow strategy, focusing on building capabilities. Since 2024, it has been making large-scale investments. The size of the smart-driving team has already exceeded 700 people, with nearly 600 training servers, building 100% of autonomous capabilities.

Leapmotor defined 2026 as the Year of Smart Driving, meaning intelligent assisted driving has reached a “practical and usable stage.” Leapmotor hopes to further improve the penetration rate of smart driving, so it has pushed down smart-driving functions into the A Series priced at within 100,000 yuan. When asked about the challenges brought by memory shortages to companies’ ability to develop smart-driving capabilities, ZHU Jiangming responded: “At present, the cockpit 8155/8295 and the smart-driving 8650 are both Snapdragon supply, so relatively speaking it will be better. But if the volume of the A10 new car becomes large to a certain extent, and on top of that the memory prices continue to rise, it will also face challenges.”

ZHU Jiangming also addressed how Leapmotor will achieve its goal of 5 billion yuan in profits this year. He believes that the profit opportunities this year include the allocation space for research and development expenses, marketing expenses, and public administration expenses brought about by scale effects.

When discussing the current situation in China where there are relatively many auto brands, ZHU Jiangming said that in fact China cannot accommodate 17 automakers. “You always need to have a clear sense of what’s going on. To avoid being eliminated, you need to be at the table. Only by being serious, very hardworking, and very diligent, and making progress a little bit every year. Only by making progress by one or two positions each year; otherwise, the last one will be me—I could be eliminated at any time.” ZHU Jiangming said that having this sense of urgency and crisis at all times is the most important.

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