According to Reuters, Volkswagen AG intends to strike a deal with Chinese EV startup Leapmotor to license its latest electric car platform.
Examples of Leapmotor car designs can be found in the gallery and the video below. Allegedly, Volkswagen plans to put the badge of its Jetta sub-brand on these new EVs. Neither company has commented on the news yet, so the information is not official. Having said that, Volkswagen Group has been actively seeking partners in China as it is looking to reinforce its standing on that market.
Leapmotor’s latest platform unveiled a few days ago is called LPEE 3.0, or ‘Four-Leaf Clover’. It envisions a dep integration of components into each other and relegates most control routines to a single supercomputer on board. The company says it can be used to design and produce all manner of electric vehicles, even totally different from each other.
The budding automaker will be unveiling its first car based on the LPEE 3.0 platform at the IAA Munich expo in Germany in September. Speaking in an interview with the media, Leapmotor CEO Zhu Jiangming confirmed that the company was in talks “with a couple of foreign businesses” regarding the use of its Four-Leaf Clover platform. He added that one of the companies was still a novice in the electric car world.