The brand hasn’t even been properly introduced yet, and Leapmotor and Stellantis are already facing serious problems. The dream of flooding the European market with cheap electric cars is fading after Leapmotor suspended its investment in the Tychy factory. Poland is largely to blame for that decision, and China is also involved in everything.
Carlos Tavares was looking forward to a very happy future when it was confirmed a few months ago that the first units of electric cars from the Chinese brand Leapmotor were leaving the Polish factory in Tychy.
Stellantis had everything ready to shake the foundations of the market with a series of models that will affect sales with their price and production quality. However, problems always arise at the last moment, and this time they are not at all to be ignored, he says Klix.ba.
At the end of October, Chinese brands received an order from the Chinese government in which they were called to immediately stop investment on the European continent in response to the imposition of tariffs on their products.
While countries such as Germany, Hungary, Malta, Slovenia and Slovakia opposed the new tariffs, a dozen others stood by that decision. Poland was one of 10 EU countries to vote “yes”, making it one of the first countries to receive China’s retaliation.
The case of Leapmotor is special, because cars of the Chinese brand are not produced in the true sense of the word on Polish territory, but the Tychy factory is dedicated to the classic assembly of semi-finished cars. These are two terms that are commonly used in the industry, but in reality they do not mean the same thing. Production involves building a car from scratch, while assembly is the joining of parts that come in containers, almost with an instruction manual.
The Chinese brand is not leaving Poland for now, but Stellantis has a problem. Leapmotor decided to follow the advice of the Chinese government, and made it known to the Polish Trade and Investment Agency, noting that they had received information from Leapmotor about the suspension of their investments in the country. The investor explains that this information is the result of a decision by the Chinese Ministry of Economy.
Polish media reports that the new Leapmotor T03 will roll off the assembly lines of the Polish factory in the coming weeks, but nothing is known about the other announced models. The Chinese brand admitted that it is a suspension, not a cancellation, so the production, or rather assembly, of the other models could start in a few weeks or months. This is certainly a big blow to Stellantis.
The European giant is forced to wait for the development of the situation to take place within a reasonable time, and if it stretches beyond what is acceptable, it has to look for an alternative. Perhaps the head of Stellantis, Carlos Tavares, will be forced to “swallow” his own words, with which he threatened the Italian government, if another Chinese brand opens a factory in their territory besides Stellantis. It is possible that Stellantis will be forced to move Leapmotor’s car assembly machines to one of its locations in Italy after all.
Source: Klix.ba
Photo: Archive Autoblog.rs / Leapmotor
Source: autoblog.rs
