Leapmotor is set to accelerate its globalisation plan with its joint venture partner, Stellantis, and plans to enter India in the second half of 2024.
16 Jun 2024 | 15705 Views | By Ketan Thakkar
Zhejiang Leapmotor Technologies Ltd wants to stamp its presence in all the segments of the Indian EV market, from hatchbacks to SUVs and MPVs. In an exclusive interview with Autocar Professional, Li Cao, ED and Sr VP of one of China’s fastest-growing electric car companies said India is definitely ...
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Zhejiang Leapmotor Technologies Ltd wants to stamp its presence in all the segments of the Indian EV market, from hatchbacks to SUVs and MPVs. In an exclusive interview with Autocar Professional, Li Cao, ED and Sr VP of one of China’s fastest-growing electric car companies said India is definitely part of the company’s plan to sell about 1 lakh units globally in 2025. The company, which plans to import a few units by the end of the year, is exploring the CKD route to make its models more accessible.
The Indian market has huge potential in the future. Not only Leapmotor but every Chinese and global brand wants to enter this market to gain market share. The first factor is India's population. Secondly, there is demand for EV cars from families. In the Indian market, people have big families, so they need this car.
Leapmotor International — the JV with Stellantis — will enter the Indian market and introduce the Leapmotor brand and product. A few units will be exported to India by the end of this year. The first batch will be CBU. We will consider CKD in the future.
It depends on two factors. The first concerns the brand and product, which still belong to Leapmotor. The second concerns Stellantis. They have a very good existing sales network. The plan is to leverage both resources. This is a very interesting business cooperation with a lot of potential.
The long-term product strategy for India is still under discussion between our product planning team and Stellantis’ teams in Europe and China. Because we have developed the European versions of C10 and TO3, the products suitable for the Indian market will be based on these two models. But, we still need to understand India's market and demand situation better.
In the short term, we will export CBU [to India]. Whether we will do CKD in India is still under discussion in the long term. However, based on the strategic cooperation with Stellantis, we will leverage their resources locally for the whole global market.
Temporarily not. For now, we will focus on the European market.
We have discussed this with some Indian companies. But it depends on each project. We cannot say we will cooperate to get a license. We will discuss case by case. We want to focus on being a supplier of parts to the companies. For our main strategy, we are still focusing on exporting Leapmotor brand’s parts to global markets.
So, for the investment plan, we will invest mainly in products and parts. Second, for the volume planning, we have ambitious volume targets. For example, in the Chinese market, last year, we sold approximately 1,50,000 units, but this year, we want to double this number.
Software engineers from the south of India are leveraged around the world, and they are big for ADAS. So, for research and development, in two or three years, the best will still be in China. But for the global markets, if some markets are expanding with huge demand, maybe we may do some tests locally and introduce some localisation.
Because this is the first year of Leapmotor International, our target is to achieve 10,000 units by the end of this year. Maybe next year, our target is 1,00,000 units.
So, what is for sure is from A segment to C segment, we will have MPVs, SUVs and hatchbacks. For our future portfolio, most of the models will be global models. So, we are open to discussing the potential in the Indian market. But finally, it will be decided by market demand. If the market needs it, we will develop it and get it to India.
This interview was first published in Autocar Professional's June 1, 2024 issue.