S01 460

STORY

The S01 was Leapmotor's first production car, a small two-door electric coupe delivered from 2019 by the Hangzhou start-up that Zhu Jiangming founded in 2015 with backing from the surveillance-technology group Dahua. It was an unusual first car for a Chinese EV maker: a small-volume 2+2 coupe instead of a mainstream hatchback or SUV. It had finger-vein and facial-recognition entry among its features. Sales were modest and the model was discontinued around 2021. Leapmotor's main sales later came from the far more successful T03 and the C-series. The S01 still set up the company's in-house engineering approach, which later supported its growth and its Hong Kong listing in 2022.