Stellantis’ Chinese partner Leapmotor will begin large-scale production in Europe next year with the B10 compact electric SUV, a company executive said.

The move is likely to allow Leapmotor to avoid European Union tariffs on Chinese full-electric and extended-range hybrid vehicles. The brand now pays 20.7 percent additional levies on top of the EU’s blanket 10 percent import duty.

Sales of the B10 start in Europe this month with models imported from China. With a base price of just under €30,000, the B10 could take market share from the leaders in the segment for compact full-electric SUVs that include the VW ID4, Skoda Elroq and Kia EV3. Those three models accounted for 57 percent of all BEV sales in the segment.

Danilo Annese, vice president for commercial operations at Leapmotor International, said Oct. 14 in a videoconference that the B10 would be the first European-built model, although Leapmotor had started building the T03 minicar in Poland in 2024 before abandoning that plan this year, reportedly because the car was not eligible for French EV incentives.

CEO Antonio Filosa said recently that Leapmotor models would be built in a Stellantis factory in Spain.

Annese said that the company is still evaluating which of Stellantis’ three Spanish plants, in Zaragoza, Madrid and Vigo, would be used by Leapmotor. The Spanish press and Reuters reported that Zaragoza is the most likely location.

Leapmotor launched in Europe last year with two models, the T03 electric minicar and the C10 midsize SUV, the latter offered as full electric or range-extender electric.

Stellantis took a 20 percent stake in Leapmotor in 2023 with an investment of about €1.5 billion. At the same time, it took a 51 percent share in Leapmotor International, a joint venture created to develop, sell and service Leapmotor cars outside of China.

The B10, revealed at the Paris auto show in 2024, is the first model designed by Leapmotor after it sold a stake to Stellantis in 2023.

“Leapmotor has an 18-month time to market, and the B10 is the first new product with inputs from Stellantis,” Leapmotor International’s head of product and marketing, Francesco Giacalone, said at a B10 media event in Biot, southern France, on Oct. 13.

Giacalone said that Leapmotor will add an EREV variant to the B10 in about six months. The company has not decided yet if the EREV variant could also be built in Spain along with the electric B10.

Chinese-built EREVs pay the same 30.7 percent total duty that Leapmotor pays on full electric models.

The investment in Leapmotor has been a bright spot for Stellantis, which is struggling to regain market share and profitability under Filosa, who replaced founding CEO Carlos Tavares in June.

“Today we celebrate the investment as a very good one,” Filosa said at an investor conference in September. “When we started the investment, Leapmotor was at 5,000 units a month in China; today we are at 50,000 units a month.” In September, sales in China reached a record of 66,000 units, the company said.

Leapmotor took 10 years to build a cumulative 1 million units, with a significant acceleration in the last two years. The company sold 293,724 cars in 2024 and 395,516 through September, with a full-year target of 600,000.

Through August, Leapmotor sold 13,095 cars in Europe, according to figures from Dataforce; it sold just 187 during the same period in 2024. The best-selling model is the T03 at 8,924, with the C10 making up the rest.

Leapmotor International aims to sell 50,000-60,000 cars globally this year, mostly in Europe, CFO Li TengFei said in August.

Annese said that Leapmotor is increasing sales month over month in Europe and would be well over 20,000 registrations this year.

“Given that shipping from China alone takes 1.5 months, on average it takes from two to three months between customer order and registration,” he said.

Europe currently accounts for over 70 percent of Leapmotor International sales. The company has also started sales in Brazil, Chile, Morocco and South Africa, with other markets to follow by the end of the year.

Spain is Europe’s second-biggest automotive manufacturer after Germany, luring automakers with relatively low labor costs, an established supplier network and inexpensive electricity.

Volkswagen Group, China’s Chery and the battery maker CATL have all announced significant investments in Spain after the government announced a €5 billion ($5.8 billion) plan in 2020 to attract EV and battery manufacturing using EU pandemic relief funds.

VW Group is converting its plant in Pamplona and Seat’s Martorell complex to build electric small cars and SUVs for the Cupra, Skoda and VW brands. Chery has started building cars in a former Nissan factory in Barcelona, although not necessarily EVs.

BYD considers Spain to be its top candidate for a third factory to serve the European market, Reuters has reported.