Leapmotor C10 mid-size electric SUV front three-quarter view
You have probably seen a Leapmotor without knowing what you were looking at. Maybe at Cityplaza in Taikoo Shing, where a compact crossover sits in a brand-new Hong Kong Island showroom with a logo you can’t quite place. Maybe in a thumbnail next to a Tesla Model Y. Maybe in a headline about Stellantis hitting four straight quarters above 100,000 units of something Chinese. One brand, three sightings, and most readers outside Greater China still aren’t sure how to pronounce it. So here is Leapmotor. The company, the cars, the Stellantis backstory, the Hong Kong pricing, the Canada timeline, and the reason every mainstream EV brand is quietly paying attention.
The Pitch
Leapmotor (零跑汽车) is the only Chinese EV brand that a Western legacy automaker owns a piece of at the corporate level and sells under its own badge in its own showrooms across Europe and the UK. The parent is Stellantis, the same group behind Peugeot, Citroen, Fiat, Jeep, Alfa Romeo and Maserati. The arrangement is a 51/49 joint venture called Leapmotor International, headquartered in Amsterdam, with exclusive rights to sell Leapmotor cars everywhere outside Greater China. No other Chinese EV maker has anything like this. BYD runs its own global distribution. Xiaomi barely exists outside China. Nio is retrenching in Europe. Leapmotor has Stellantis doing the dealer work, the homologation and, if the Brampton talks go through, the Canadian assembly. If you are shopping an EV under HK$250,000 or around CAD 50,000, you need to know this name.
Leapmotor at a Glance
| Founded | December 2015, Hangzhou |
| Founders | Fu Liquan, Zhu Jiangming (both ex-Dahua Technology) |
| Chairman and CEO | Zhu Jiangming |
| Stock ticker | HKEX: 9863 |
| Stellantis stake | 18.99% (October 2023, €1.5 billion) |
| FAW Group stake | 5% (December 2025, RMB 3.744 billion) |
| 2025 deliveries | 596,555 vehicles (103% YoY) |
| 2026 target | 1,000,000 vehicles |
| Markets served | 40+ countries, ~1,700 sales and service points |
| First HK store | June 11, 2025, Cityplaza Taikoo Shing |
| HK models (RHD) | T03, C10 |
| HK price range | HK$99,900 (T03) to HK$199,900 (C10) |
| Flagship export | Leapmotor C10 mid-size SUV |
Who Leapmotor Actually Is
The origin story matters because it explains why the cars feel the way they do. Leapmotor was founded in December 2015 by two Dahua Technology veterans, Fu Liquan and Zhu Jiangming. Dahua is a Chinese industrial giant most Western readers have never heard of, one of the two largest video-surveillance companies in the world. That matters because it means Leapmotor’s founders did not come from the auto industry. They came from chips, cameras, vision systems and embedded software, and they built a car company the way a Silicon Valley startup would build one, with an obsession over vertical integration and in-house electronics. By 2026, Leapmotor says it develops and manufactures 65% of a car’s parts in-house, targeting 80%. The philosophy was baked into the name: “zero emissions, zero collisions, zero congestion,” and the Chinese characters 零跑 literally read “zero run.”
The first car, the S01 coupe, shipped in 2019 and was largely ignored. The T03 city car that followed in 2020 was not. By 2023 the company was profitable for the first time. In October 2023 Stellantis announced a €1.5 billion investment for a 18.99% strategic stake and set up the Leapmotor International joint venture on a 51/49 Stellantis-led basis. In December 2025, Chinese state-owned giant FAW Group took a 5% stake for RMB 3.744 billion. Zhu’s framing at the 2025 annual results call was blunt: 2026 would be Leapmotor’s “million-unit breakthrough year.” The company delivered 596,555 vehicles in 2025, more than doubling the previous year, and posted four straight quarters above 100,000 deliveries through Q1 2026, outpacing BYD on sequential growth in the same window.
The Lineup You Can Actually Buy
Here is the range as it stands in April 2026, with a one-line view on each.
T03 (city car). The smallest one, and the Leapmotor most foreign buyers meet first. In Hong Kong it is HK$99,900, which, yes, is genuinely under a hundred thousand for a brand new right-hand drive EV from a showroom with a warranty. WLTP 265 km of range, L2 driver assistance, and, crucially for Europe, already being built at Stellantis’ Tychy plant in Poland. Think of it as the Leapmotor answer to the question “can you make a good EV for the price of a used Toyota.”
C10 (mid-size SUV, the flagship export). This is the car you will see on most non-Chinese roads. HK$199,900 in Hong Kong for the RHD version, £36,500 in the UK, AU$49,888 in Australia. Mid-size family EV, 69.9 kWh LFP battery, 160 kW rear-wheel-drive motor, 0-100 km/h in 7.5 seconds, WLTP range 425 km. The car that directly undercuts the Tesla Model Y by the cost of a decent holiday.
B10 (compact SUV). The one Europe is about to fall for. Launched in October 2024 in China from 129,800 RMB, production confirmed at Stellantis’ Zaragoza plant in Spain for European supply. A lidar sensor and L2+ driver assistance stack at that price is, in engineering terms, absurd value.
2026 roadmap. Four new models are coming this year: A10 compact SUV (launched March 26, 2026, top trim under RMB 100,000, Alibaba Qwen AI on board), D19 large SUV (mid-to-late April 2026, RMB 300,000 segment, BEV plus 80.3 kWh EREV), A05 budget BEV with an optional lidar (late June to early July 2026), and D99 luxury MPV (late June to early July 2026). Between them, Leapmotor expects these four to account for 60% of the 1 million unit target.
What It’s Actually Like to Own One
This is where the Leapmotor story gets interesting, because the verdict depends on what you value.
The C10 flagship is a big, quiet, comfortable family SUV with hectares of legroom, a supple ride, and a price tag that makes the Tesla Model Y look overpriced. It is not a driver’s car. The steering is light and numb, the throttle tuning prioritises smoothness over attack, and the handling is tuned for a commute, not a back road. The cabin is well-built at this price point but not luxurious, with recycled-feel materials on the lower dash and a couple of trim gaps if you go looking. There is no Apple CarPlay and no Android Auto, which is the single most common complaint from buyers moving over from a Korean or Japanese EV. The driver assistance works but is cautious, occasionally braking when the car in front taps its brakes. The keycard-only entry and flush door handles look sleek and feel slightly awkward in daily use.
Real-world range on the 69.9 kWh battery-electric C10 lands around 400 to 450 km of mixed driving in spring conditions, closer to 330 km in a Northern European or Northern Chinese winter, and roughly 400 km at a steady 100 km/h highway cruise with the climate control off. Energy consumption runs 12.5 to 14.8 kWh per 100 km in temperate weather. None of that is class-leading. All of it is acceptable for the price.
The B10 compact SUV is the value story that actually excites us. A flat rear floor, a huge panoramic sunroof, lidar and L2+ driver assistance for under RMB 130,000 in China is a specification sheet that should not be possible at that number. The caveats are specific and small: there is no front trunk or proper glovebox, the rear door handles are manual, and the shared ADAS calibration is the same cautious tune as the C10. We recommend a long test drive before signing, especially if you are used to CarPlay, but the value proposition is real. You get what you pay for, and here you are paying for a lot of car.
Where You Can Actually Buy One
Leapmotor’s global map is now large enough to be useful. The brand operates in more than 40 countries with around 1,700 sales and service points, and the list keeps growing.
Hong Kong. First store opened June 11, 2025 at Cityplaza, Taikoo Shing, and it was Leapmotor’s 1,500th global retail location. A second Hong Kong store followed in December 2025. The right-hand drive T03 (HK$99,900) and C10 (HK$199,900) were both launched at the 2025 International Automobile and Supply Chain Expo. CEO Zhu Jiangming was explicit that Hong Kong’s role is less about local volume (the city moves only 40,000 to 50,000 new cars a year) and more about positioning the brand in front of global consumers and international investors. Vice-president Li Tengfei added: “speed is critical. Whoever captures the market and wins over local consumers faster will gain a competitive edge globally.”
United Kingdom. Launched March 2025 with 71 retailers. By early 2026 the network had grown to 73, with a target of 100 by year-end. In January 2026, nearly half of all Leapmotor UK registrations were private buyers, and the brand took 7th place in the UK retail BEV charts with 5.4% market share.
Europe. 35,000+ vehicles in 2025, the first full year. Q4 2025 alone delivered more than 17,000 units for above 2% of the EU29 passenger BEV market. The 2026 target is 100,000+. The dealer network more than doubled to 800+ points of sale across 13 countries, including new 2025 entries in Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden. T03 assembly in Poland is live. B10 production at Stellantis’ Zaragoza plant in Spain has been officially confirmed.
Australia, Southeast Asia, Middle East. The C10 has launched in Australia from AU$49,888. Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia are live, with the B10 incoming. Middle East, Africa, and India-Asia Pacific operations started rolling out in late 2024.
Canada. This is the one to watch. In January 2026, Prime Minister Mark Carney struck a deal with Xi Jinping to cut Canada’s tariff on Chinese EVs from 100% to 6.1%, capped at 49,000 vehicles initially and rising to 70,000 over five years. In April 2026, reports emerged that Stellantis is in early-stage talks to build Leapmotor EVs at its idled Brampton, Ontario plant. Canadian Industry Minister Melanie Joly confirmed Ottawa is participating in those discussions, while noting any deal must use local labour and parts. Nothing is signed, timelines are vague, and US tariff retaliation is a live risk. But if any Chinese brand lands local assembly in Canada before the end of the decade, Leapmotor is the name on the card.
Why This Matters
Everyone in the mainstream EV business understands what BYD is. Leapmotor is different in a way that makes it more, not less, dangerous to the incumbents. It has the Chinese cost structure, the 65-and-climbing percent in-house parts discipline, and the Silicon Valley style vertical integration. It also has Stellantis’ dealer network, Stellantis’ homologation teams, Stellantis’ European and possibly Canadian factories, and Stellantis’ reason to want this to work because Stellantis just posted a €15.5 billion loss and needs a winning EV story. For Hong Kong drivers, that means a value benchmark the established dealers now have to answer. For Canadian readers, it means the first serious chance to buy a China-designed EV off a local showroom floor with a warranty you can trust. For everyone else, it means the next time a Kia EV5 or Tesla Model Y shopper test drives the car parked next to it and finds it is a Leapmotor C10 that costs HK$40,000 or AU$9,000 less, the decision gets harder.
Verdict
Buy a Leapmotor today if you are a pragmatic EV shopper who cares more about metres of legroom, charging speed, warranty coverage and your bank balance than about CarPlay, badge prestige or the last 10% of dynamic polish. The C10 at HK$199,900 is the clearest value in the Hong Kong mid-size electric SUV class right now, and the T03 at HK$99,900 is the cheapest new car of any kind worth driving off a local forecourt. If you are a keen driver who wants the steering to talk back, buy something else, a BMW i4 or a Polestar 4, and stop pretending that value is the only thing that matters. If you are a Canadian reader waiting for a Chinese EV you can actually service locally, hold your horses, because Brampton is talks, not concrete. And if you are any other mainstream automaker reading this: Leapmotor is the one to watch, because the Stellantis deal means they are not going away, and 2026 is the year the name stops being unfamiliar.
You have been warned. You have also been introduced.
