Can Leapmotor Save Stellantis Or Is It A Path For Chinese EV Makers To Go Global?

Stellantis is in trouble, big trouble, they are shutting down plants, laying off workers and sales are disappointing. On the other hand, Chinese car makers are increasingly building better cars for lower costs but are having trouble selling outside of China both because they haven’t learned the international markets yet, and because China is experiencing massive automotive tariffs. 

Leapmotor International is a joint 51/49 Stellantis-led joint venture meaning Stellantis has the dominant position for international Leapmotor sales. Their first featured vehicle, the C10, is a lower priced and arguably better alternative to the Tesla Y. With domestic EV prices still higher than they should be this Leapmotor partnership could be just what the doctor ordered for Stellantis and Leapmotor.

The Power Of Partnerships

Partnerships work best when both parties have aligned goals and worst when they don’t. In this case, Stellantis needs a viable and competitively priced EV solution to give their dealers so they can maintain store traffic and continue to be a viable car company. Leapmotor needs International distribution and a dealer network in order to sell their cars in higher volumes given the Chinese market is saturated with low cost EVs and Leapmotor is simply another EV maker there.

So, this is a decent match between makers where the total could be far more powerful than the sum of the parts. In other words, there is a decent chance for synergy between these two vendors short term.

Long term however, there could be issues because Stellantis will eventually sort its own electric vehicle efforts and Leapmotor may want their own brand on dealerships. These kinds of partnership don’t tend to last very long, recall the DeTomaso Pantera that was sold in Ford dealerships and eventually replaced by the Ford GT for instance.

Still, for not, this looks like a decent partnership between two companies both motivated to assure its success.

The Leapmotor C10

The Leapmotor C10 isn’t a bad looking or driving car, and it does price out competitively to the segment leader the Tesla Model Y, and Tesla seems to be going out of its way to upset Tesla owners who still seem to like EVs they are just growing tired of Tesla and largely left with few well priced alternatives. 

To my eye the Leapmotor looks a bit like a Dodge Charger in front, and a more generic EV SUV from the side, and it has a Lincoln-like rear end. The result is clean if not particularly interesting in any real way, which is similar to the Model Y. Neither car is terribly pretty or ugly they are clean unassuming designs which, I suppose, is fitting for a value-priced EV. The interior of the car looks richer than the Tesla Y, while the performance lags the Tesla somewhat. And we are expecting a significantly lower price (though that will depend on whether they can get out from under the Chinese Tariffs).

With a 0-60 in the 7-minute range and an overall range of around 262 miles and an expected price around $40K it should be able to provide a decent value for the money and position well against low-cost Tesla Y alternatives. 

It is interesting to note that Maserati tuned the suspension of the car which made the car handle significantly better than other Chinese-made cars.

Wrapping Up:

The Leapmotor C10, if the launch is executed well, should provide Stellantis with some breathing room by giving them a low-cost well-made EV that can compete with the popular Tesla Y. But Stellantis will need more than one interesting EV to pull them out of the mess they are in and, as noted, they’ll need to market this car well which is often difficult in a company that is having financial difficulties.

If this partnership works, however, expect more between domestic automakers and Chinese automakers as both increasingly look to the other do resolve their shared sales problems. And to answer the question in the title, yes to both.

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst at Torque News who covers automotive technology and battery development. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia and follow his articles on Forbes, X, and LinkedIn.