“Every single unit we sell and every single Euro we make, we are fully consolidated into the Stellantis book. I always say to my team: ‘we are a start-up with two good parents. The Chinese parent provides innovative technologies and products at competitive cost. And Stellantis is able to give me a strong, powerful European network’,” he said.
Leapmotor is able to tap its European parent for administrative functions such as IT and customer management software, parts warehousing and logistics. Xin is confident parts can be with service centres within a day or two to minimise vehicle downtime.
More product initiatives – potentially powered by Stellantis
With Leapmotor poised to tap into Stellantis’s European factory network, could it also use its platforms? “It would bring more scale,” said the boss, although he counseled that the cars must be strongly differentiated.
And with Leapmotor reliant on EV and hybrid power, could it broaden its powertrain offer with access to staples such as Stellantis’s 1.2-litre three-cylinder turbo engine? “If it’s possible, if it’s needed,” Xin explained. “That’s one of the beauties of this deal. What you mention is one of the potential opportunities to be explored between Leapmotor and Stellantis.”
This would give Leapmotor the chance to attack the non-EV market, because its small cars are currently only engineered for electric power, and REx powertrains are reserved for bigger cars.
“For instance, REx will come in bigger cars, because you need space for an engine and big batteries, and you drive longer distances. So B10 and C10 both have hybrid EV technology plus pure BEV. For the other vehicles we are focusing on pure BEV technologies, but it doesn’t rule out in the future that we will introduce other alternative powertrains into those cars as well, depending on how fast this energy transition is going to happen outside of China.”
Even with just the two powertrains, Xin believes his brand is set for decent growth. “For most of 2025, we had only two models, but we managed to register more than 35,000 units, with actual sales topping 60,000. And Leapmotor globally has announced a one million volume target for 2026. My objective is Europe should contribute more than 10 per cent of that volume.”
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