It could be the Brazil to solve the Leapmotor Case for Stellantis. Leapmotor International is the joint venture between the Italian-French group and the Chinese one, with the former holding 51% of the capital and above all the exclusive rights to produce and sell the electric vehicles outside China. It is precisely on this point that disagreements arose: in 2023 Stellantis became a strategic shareholder of the Chinese company Leapmotor with a investment of 1,5 billion of euros and the clear objective of focusing on electric. Today, the Chinese partner is still a minor brand of the group, with a lower positioning than Fiat and Citroën, but the joint venture plans to be able to reach sell 500.000 units per year by 2030. However, we need to find a place to produce these vehicles, given that Beijing has issued a diktat not to invest in countries that have supported duties on Chinese cars, and therefore essentially in Europe, after Brussels imposed new tariffs.
Leapmotor: Production in Poland stopped
The problem is that Stellantis had chosen for Leapmotor the Tychy pole, in Poland, not without controversy, given that it could have relaunched the Mirafiori plant in Italy. Now Stellantis has found itself forced to interrupt production of the Chinese Leapmotor T03 car at the Polish plant: as anticipated by the French newspaper Les Echos the group “is no longer assembling the model in Poland since March 30: the company remains fully committed to the launch program of Leapmotor vehicles in Europe, but is currently evaluating different options for their production”. The Stellantis and Leapmotor projects have therefore been blocked by the Chinese government furious about the introduction of European duties on electric cars produced in China, but above all with the countries that have expressly supported the protectionist measure launched by the EU Commission. This is why there would still be hope of remaining in some way in Europe, but unfortunately not in Turin: a solution, by virtue of the friendship between Xi Jinping and Viktor Orban would be Hungary, but Stellantis is not present in the country.
Leapmotor: From Spain to Brazil
So we are thinking about the Spain, which opposed the duties and which has the Zaragoza hub: this was revealed by the agency ReutersIt should also be remembered that Stellantis' investment in electric is not limited to the joint venture with Leapmotor but is contained in a overall plan of 50 billion euros and that 4,1 billion euros were spent on a lithium-iron-phosphate battery factory, again in a 50/XNUMX partnership with a Chinese company, CATL. According to the Brazilian press, the solution that is now being considered by the Italian-French team is precisely Brazil, a market where Fiat has been very strong for decades and very popular in Beijing, which already builds electric cars there. The South American country has lower labor costs and is also an interesting outlet market, as is all of Latin America, where the cars of the future are still less widespread than in Europe but for this very reason have room for growth. In January, the new CEO of Stellantis in South America, 49-year-old Emanuele Cappellano, had announced hiring in Betim and Porto Real poles, in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
The latter seems to be the most suitable plant to host Leapmotor's electric production, as admitted by the manager himself who clarified that not all the models of the Chinese joint venture are interesting for the Brazilian market and that initially the vehicles will be imported from China, but that the objective is actually to bring the production to Brazil: "We are thinking about it, it is a real possibility”, said Cappellano at a press conference. Throughout South America, including Argentina where Stellantis recently announced investments of almost 400 million dollars in the Cordoba hub, the group born from the merger between Fiat and Peugeot boasts the following numbers: a production capacity of 1,3 million cars per year (mainly in Brazil and Argentina but also in Uruguay), 4 research and development centers, 30.000 direct employees, over 2 engineers and technicians. In Brazil, the first brand has been Fiat for four years in a row, which in 2024 sold over half a million cars in the Portuguese-speaking country, with a market share of 21%.
