Can I use LS for lead generation in the following way:

I have a public news website about cars (all users are non-logged-in visitors, I have no membership/signup available to the user). Inside an article I will use LS to ask my users about they opinion on cars (Likert scale). At the end of the survey, LS will ask for user name and email. After survey LS automatically sends a "thank you for participating" email to the user.

Thank you for any reply.

Sounds possible. But depending on your CMS you might get better integration with other tools.
Depends on what "Inside an article I will use LS" should look like. A simple link? A iframe? LimeSurvey is not offering widgets for thirdparty integration itself.

The confirmation mail can be done via a workaround.
You can use one of the administrator confirmation templates.
Just enter a variable in the emailadress field instead of a static emailadress.
When asking for the emailadress in the survey LS replaces the emailadress and you have your confirmation email.

Look for "Send basic admin notification email to:" and "Send detailed admin notification email to:"
on this page.
www.limesurvey.org/manual/Data_management