Leapmotor's Zhou Hongtao: Sprinting for Top Intelligent Driving Spot in 2026; Internal Competition Among Three Routes Concludes with World Model

At its annual technology conference, Leapmotor announced that its self-developed world model intelligent assisted driving has reached the industry's first tier, and will cover all vehicle models while supporting upgrades for existing owners. This move marks the basic formation of Leapmotor's core technical route in the autonomous driving field.

Before finalizing the world model route, Leapmotor internally ran a horse race among three technical routes: Intelligent Driving 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0. Ultimately, Intelligent Driving 4.0 won due to its lower overall takeover rate, validating the world model's advantage in handling complex driving scenarios. In contrast, the already mass-produced 2.0 two-stage end-to-end solution suffers from the pain point of perception information loss.

The world model enables the autonomous driving system to possess human-like physical common sense and prediction capabilities, allowing it to better handle long-tail scenarios. Leapmotor's full transition to the world model means it will abandon traditional rule-driven or two-stage end-to-end solutions, evolving towards a more advanced end-to-end large model.

With the comprehensive implementation of this intelligent driving solution in 2026, Leapmotor is expected to join the top tier of the industry in intelligent driving capabilities. This also reflects that the current competition among automakers in the autonomous driving field has shifted from hardware stacking to underlying innovation in algorithm architecture, with the world model becoming a new high ground of industry consensus.

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