Chinese electric vehicle startup Leapmotor's flagship SUV, the C11, will be in mass production and on sale by October this year, co-founder Wu Baojun announced Thursday.

C11 is equipped with China's first AI smart driving chip with fully independent intellectual property, Lingxin 01, Wu said.

C11 officially opens for pre-sale in early 2021 and is available in three options, priced at RMB 159,800 ($24,725), RMB 179,800 and RMB 199,800 respectively.

C11 measures 4,750 x 1,905 x 1,650 mm with a wheelbase of 2,930 mm. It has a maximum NEDC range of over 600 km and the dual-motor 4WD version has a claimed 0-100 km/h acceleration time of less than 5 seconds.

C11 features an intelligent cockpit with Qualcomm Snapdragon's third-generation digital cockpit platform, which the company claims is nearly three times more powerful than the most advanced models on the market today.

C11 also features a face ID auto-adaptation system, mobile App-based remote control and many other features.

The model is equipped with 28 smart sensing hardware in the same class as the Tesla Model Y, including 10 cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars, 5 millimeter-wave radars and a face recognition camera.

The two in-house developed Lingxin 01 intelligent driving chips, with 8.4Tops of computing power, support access to 12 cameras to achieve 2.5D 360° surround view, automatic parking, ADAS domain control and nearly L3 level intelligent driving assistance functions.

C11 connects the entire intelligent driving system from the chip level and uses a complete set of intelligent driving solutions with fully independent intellectual property rights, the company said.

Leapmotor founder Zhu Jiangming said the company is confident in its self-driving technology and expects to achieve full-scene autonomous driving by 2024 and surpass Tesla within three years.

By the end of 2025, the company will launch eight models covering a price range of up to RMB 350,000, and plans to enter overseas markets in 2022.

The overall sales target for Leapmotor in 2025 is 800,000 units, Zhu said.

Leapmotor's plant gets vehicle production qualification