A automaker promising to double interior space without lengthening the car and to abolish the 12-volt battery altogether? On paper, the plan has more than enough to raise eyebrows among drivers. Yet this is what Leapmotor, the Chinese brand within the Stellantis group, has just announced, unveiling two technical building blocks aimed at both the cabin and the electrical system itself.
LEAP 5.0: Leapmotor rethinks the cockpit as a living space
On Wednesday, September 16, 2026, at its battery production site in Huzhou, the Leapmotor Tech Day 2026 served as a showcase for two major novelties. First, the new LEAP 5.0 New Mobile Space Architecture. Then, the battery Cell-to-Chassis CTC 3.0 High-Low Fusion.
With LEAP 5.0, Leapmotor no longer talks merely about a platform, but about an architecture of “mobile space”. This technical base marks a rupture in how components are arranged, with an efficiency gain announced to be 100% higher than the brand’s previous architectures. It adopts a centralized, integrated control system designed for the needs of modern electric vehicles packed with driving-assistance technologies and connected features. The first models to benefit from it are expected to be unveiled starting in 2027.
Concretely, the architecture brings together an all-in-one climate-control module with a rear-mounted drivetrain, two components that used to be separate. The result is that interior length increases by 19%, the number of parts is reduced by 18%, and the required length of piping drops by 30%. Engineers also opted for vertically mounted dampers paired with a more compact aluminum turret, which limits intrusion into the cabin and boosts front-row legroom by 37.5%. The raised roof and a lower, entirely flat floor, made possible by a skateboard-style design, allow a 63.7% increase in interior height and the creation of an open loft-like cabin, with enough height to stand upright, opening the door to novel ways of configuring the interior space.
CTC 3.0: a structural battery that makes the 12-volt battery disappear
The other cornerstone unveiled in Huzhou is the battery CTC 3.0 High-Low Fusion, the latest evolution of the in-house Cell-to-Chassis technology without a pack. Here, the intermediate modules disappear. Battery cells are integrated directly into the chassis. A major novelty is that the high- and low-voltage systems now use the same cells and modules, and share the same thermal management and energy distribution. Capacities and low-voltage functions are multiplied by seven compared with the previous generation, to the point of delivering power equivalent to a traditional 12-volt battery and thereby eliminating the need for it on board.
Traditionally, the 12-volt auxiliary battery forms the electrical backbone of a vehicle. It powers the starter, but also a long list of equipment: wipers, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, lighting, infotainment screens, safety systems, and even airbags. With CTC 3.0, Leapmotor says its future models will become the first mass-market vehicles in more than 70 years to operate entirely without this lead-acid battery. A large-scale rollout could remove tens of millions of auxiliary batteries each year, delivering a marked reduction in the pollution associated with spent batteries.
The system is described as functioning maintenance-free for the life of the vehicle, with no battery replacement anticipated, which points to meaningful savings on the total cost of ownership for owners.
