Leapmotor to have a six-car line-up in the UK by 2027

Leapmotor will have six cars in its UK line-up by 2027 as it looks to solidify its place as the latest Chinese electric car maker cutting through here.

The firm, whose international business is 51% owned by global giant Stellantis, already sells a Dacia Spring rival, the T03, and has just launched the C10 large SUV. A range-extender version will arrive at the end of the year.

The B10, an Alfa Romeo Tonale-sized SUV, will come shortly after. There will also be a smaller B-segment SUV and two more vehicles that aren’t SUVs, one B-segment and one C-segment. It isn’t yet clear which bodystyles these two will take.

Leapmotor may also introduce its REx technology in some of those models but will await reaction to its application in the C10 REEV first.

Leapmotor UK boss Damien Dally said the brand’s goal is to be “the best-value EV brand with the highest level of technology”, describing it as “a tech firm which makes cars”.

While not detailing any specific growth plans, Dally described Leapmotor as a long-term project but acknowledged that in the short term it would help the Stellantis group reach its ZEV mandate target by being a predominantly electric brand.

Currently there are 44 Leapmotor dealers at existing Stellantis brand sites, and by the end of the year the brand intends to have around 75, which would put it on the same scale as Fiat (also part of Stellantis) in the UK.

The T03 is the only Leapmotor model currently built in Europe (specifically Poland) – a move that was made in an impressively short space of time, as a result of Stellantis’s existing set-up on the continent.

Dally said it was “likely that other cars will be made in Europe beyond the T03”, given Stellantis’s existing large-scale infrastructure and the benefit of avoiding EU import tariffs on Chinese EVs.