May 30, 2026 – At today’s Future Auto Pioneer Conference in Jinan, Leapmotor COO Xu Jun made a blunt assessment of the current EV market: price is king, and anyone who refuses to fight the pricing war risks being ignored entirely.
“It’s a brutal reality,” Xu admitted. “If you don’t cut prices, consumers simply won’t show up.” For Leapmotor, slashing prices isn’t a strategy — it’s a decision born out of necessity.
But surviving on thin margins isn’t sustainable. Xu argued that the real path to profitability lies in cost reduction — satisfying buyers without starving the business.
He also pushed back hard against the industry’s obsession with spec sheets. Consumers, he claimed, barely notice the difference between a 700 km and a 1,000 km range, yet the cost jumps exponentially. The same applies to compute power: jumping from 30 TOPS to 1,000 TOPS delivers far less real-world improvement than the numbers suggest.
“Today you add seat massage, tomorrow every brand copies it. When everything is ‘good enough,’ specs become a ticket to entry — not a winning move,” Xu said, drawing a parallel to smartphones, where roughly half the features go unused. “We’ve been over-delivering. The auto industry needs to ask itself: what do users actually want?”
His answer: not a spec sheet, but a fast, reliable, and affordable mobility solution.
Xu also hinted at Leapmotor’s upcoming “second brand” initiative. Details remain scarce, but he confirmed the project is actively underway, with products potentially debuting by the end of this year or early next year.
