Tech News

Can Leapmotor save Stellantis in the shift to electric vehicles?

Published

9 hours ago

March 16, 2025

John

In a tough automotive industry, Stellantis is facing challenges. As we recently reported, the company’s profits fell 70% in 2024, and its outspoken CEO Carlos Tavares quit at the end of the year.

Although many traditional automakers have found the shift to electrification disruptive, Stellantis seems to have particularly struggled to negotiate the new market. Now there’s yet another brand being added to its huge portfolio that promises more electric options, but it’s a bit different from the rest. Could Leapmotor be the Stellantis marque that turns the multinational behemoth’s fortunes around?

Leapmotor joins the other 14 members of the Stellantis group (although only eight are active in Europe). The Stellantis name was born when PSA Group (which combined Peugeot, Citroen, Vauxhall/Opel, and DS) merged with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Lancia, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram). But all these brands are fully owned by Stellantis. Leapmotor is a Chinese company, which has been operating in its home country since 2015. Stellantis purchased 20% of the business in China in 2023, but now also owns 51% of the Leapmotor International wing that was launched in Europe in 2024 to bring the brand to a global market.

Why Leapmotor?

From one perspective, it’s valid to ask why Stellantis needs yet another brand. But Leapmotor potentially plugs a gap like nothing else in its portfolio. When the current battery-electric (BEV) transition started around 2020, Stellantis appeared to have mostly one drivetrain on offer. This combined a 136hp motor driving a vehicle’s front wheels with a 50kWh battery. It appeared in everything from compact hatchbacks like the Peugeot e-208 all the way up to sizeable vans like the Citroen e-Dispatch (although some vans did offer larger batteries).

From one perspective, it’s valid to ask why Stellantis needs yet another brand. But Leapmotor potentially plugs a gap like nothing else in its portfolio.

The results weren’t terrible, and neither were the prices (by BEV standards), but they were platforms shared with internal combustion engine (ICE) versions. This meant they missed out on some of the benefits from design innovations that pure-BEV platforms make possible, such as larger under-floor batteries for lots of range, dual-motor performance, and increased interior space.

More recently, the company has developed more advanced EV drivetrains, such as STLA Small and Medium. These have been presented as being intended specifically for BEVs, but they do still support ICE. They are more “BEV first” than pure BEV, but that is still a considerable improvement over the compromised prior platforms. This has allowed new models like the Peugeot e-3008 to offer more competitive features than previous Stellantis EVs, such as much larger batteries capable of over 400 miles of range. The technology stack also feels much more seamlessly integrated into the car.

However, the vehicles built on these new Stellantis platforms still exhibit a continuing problem for most European carmakers – they remain relatively expensive. That’s not a disaster when most automakers have the same issue with BEV pricing. But now that Korean and Chinese brands are starting to offer strong competition in Europe, the EV market is becoming increasingly cramped and price-sensitive, making it hard to stand out. For example, Chinese automaker BYD is posing a considerable challenge, and in the U.K. MG has been expanding electric possibilities.

Stellantis’ incumbent advantage

However, while challenger brands can tempt with very compelling pricing, they often lack the support network to continue the good experience after sales. What Stellantis is hoping is that there is a powerful synergy between what it has to offer as a traditional incumbent automaker–a well-established network of dealerships and service centers–and what Chinese brands can provide. These days, that’s not just low costs, but also advanced technology. The Leapmotor cars arriving in Europe boast innovative BEV features, and they have plenty of leading-edge safety tech built in as standard too.

However, price is still a key feature of the Leapmotor offering. The most market-challenging model among the first two launched in Europe is the T03, a small four-door hatchback. The T03 is arriving in Britain at £15,995 ($20,500). By EV standards that’s a bargain. The Dacia Spring starts at £14,995 ($19,500), but that’s without an infotainment screen, which the T03 has as standard. The Spring also has a smaller battery (meaning less range) and a less powerful motor. Leapmotor aims to match the Spring on price but surpass on EV features and quality.

The story is similar with the other car Leapmotor has launched in Europe so far – the C10. At first glance, this looks a lot more “me too” than the T03. It’s a mid-sized electric SUV costing £36,500 ($47,000), and there are a lot of competitors from other brands around this price. However, Leapmotor only offers one premium-grade trim level for the C10, like the T03, with features like a panoramic sunroof, a heat-pump (improving winter range), heated and ventilated front seats, and a kick-to-open tailgate as standard. Other brands charge a lot more once you add these kinds of luxuries. The C10 has initially been launched as a BEV with 263 miles of WLTP range, but a “serial hybrid” is also imminent.

Bracing for the Chinese automotive invasion

The Leapmotor venture isn’t just an excuse for Stellantis to import cheap cars made in China, however. The cheapest model, the T03, is made in Tychy in Poland, so should be resistant to the global trade war that is evolving daily. The C10 is imported from China, but the next model to be released, the B10, will be built in Slovakia and Germany. Three more models will be introduced by the end of 2027. Leapmotor aims to continue its ethos of offering premium features for keen prices with these launches.

There is an increasing array of quality Chinese or Chinese-owned EV brands entering the European market, including XPENG and Geely-owned marques ZEEKR and Lynk & Co. Geely is also the force behind Swedish Volvo and Polestar. Changan (which has Ford and Mazda joint ventures) is another Chinese brand just about to enter Europe. The challenges for European automakers are only set to increase.

Even though tariffs might temporarily protect European brands at home, they can’t make them competitive on the global market against the Chinese. Stellantis appears to have adopted a policy more of “if you can’t beat them, join them” with its Leapmotor International strategy. The prices are competitive but for a more premium specification than alternatives, giving the cars a potential edge. This might not be enough to reverse the 70% fall in profits from 2024 entirely, but it could certainly help keep Stellantis in the game as Europe increasingly electrifies.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Tech News

Baidu releases reasoning AI model to take on DeepSeek

Published

1 hour ago

March 16, 2025

John

Baidu Inc. released a new artificial intelligence model that articulates its reasoning, in an apparent bid to regain momentum against up-and-coming rivals like DeepSeek.

The Ernie X1 model by China’s internet search leader works similarly to DeepSeek R1 — which shocked Silicon Valley by offering comparable performance to the world’s best chatbots at a fraction of their development cost. Baidu’s reasoning model excels in areas like daily dialogs, complex calculations and logical deduction, it said in a statement Sunday.

Baidu also upgraded its flagship foundation model to Ernie 4.5. It immediately made all tiers of its service — including the X1 model — free for its chatbot users, several weeks than earlier previously planned.

The Beijing-based company was the first in China’s trillion-dollar tech sector to launch a chatbot modeled after OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but rival chatbots from ByteDance Ltd. and Moonshot AI soon took over in popularity. Open-sourced models like Alibaba’s Qwen and then DeepSeek gained greater recognition within the global developer community.

Ernie 4.5 outperforms OpenAI’s latest GPT 4.5 in text generation, Baidu said, citing several industry benchmarks.

Baidu has declared that it will make Ernie AI models open-source from June 30, representing a major strategic shift after the rise of DeepSeek. It also integrated the R1 model into its search engine — its bread-and-butter business.

The generative AI boom showed up in Baidu’s December-quarter results via a 26% jump in cloud revenue. That rise, driven by services provided to developers chasing computing power, was overshadowed by weak advertising sales amid China’s economic malaise.

Baidu concluded last month a drawn-out deal to acquire the YY Live streaming platform Joyy Inc. The $2.1 billion takeover released some $1.6 billion that Baidu previously deposited into escrow accounts, which it plans to invest into AI and cloud infrastructure.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Tech News

China maps out plan to raise incomes and boost consumption

Published

1 hour ago

March 16, 2025

John

China will take steps to revive consumption by boosting people’s incomes, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Sunday, citing a statement from the State Council.

Other measures include stabilizing the stock and real estate markets, and offering incentives to raise the country’s birth rate, as the government tries to ease the deflationary pressures afflicting the economy.

Beijing will promote “reasonable growth” in wages and establish a sound mechanism for adjusting the minimum wage, Xinhua reported. It will also look at setting up a childcare subsidy system, as well as strengthening how investment can support consumption.

Invigorating consumption has been a challenge for the government since the end of the pandemic. Retail sales have been anemic while consumer prices fell into deflation in February for the first time in over a year.

At annual parliamentary meetings this month, the country’s leadership made boosting consumption their top priority for the first time since President Xi Jinping came to power over a decade ago.

Chinese stocks rallied the most in two months on Friday after the State Council, China’s cabinet, announced that officials from the finance ministry, the central bank and other government departments plan to hold a press conference Monday on measures to boost consumption.

Other highlights of the plan:

Enlarge variety of bond-related products suitable for individual investors
Adopt multiple measures to promote increase in farm incomes
Raise financial help for some students
Appropriately increase the basic pension for retirees
Ensure timely and full distribution of unemployment benefits
Support tourist attractions in expanding services and the reasonable extension of business hours
Support opening of duty-free shops in cities where conditions permit
Boost support for trade-in programs
Lower the interest rate on housing provident fund loans at an appropriate time
Scale back restrictions on consumption in an orderly manner
Accelerate the development of new technologies and products such as smart wearables and autonomous driving

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Tech News

New Prime Minister Mark Carney vows Canada will ‘never, ever’ be part of the US as he seeks alliances in Europe

Published

1 hour ago

March 16, 2025

John

New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is heading to Paris and London on Monday to seek alliances as he deals with U.S. President Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada’s sovereignty and economy.

Carney is purposely making his first foreign trip to the capital cities of the two countries that shaped Canada’s early existence.

At his swearing-in ceremony on Friday, Carney noted the country was built on the bedrock of three peoples, French, English and Indigenous, and said Canada is fundamentally different from America and will “never, ever, in any way shape or form, be part of the United States.”

“The Trump factor is the reason for the trip. The Trump factor towers over everything else Carney must deal with,” said Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto.

Carney, a former central banker who turned 60 on Sunday, will meet with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday and later travel to London to sit down with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer in an effort to diversify trade and perhaps coordinate a response to Trump’s tariffs.

He will also meet with King Charles III, the head of state in Canada. The trip to England is a bit a homecoming, as Carney is a former governor of the Bank of England, the first noncitizen to be named to the role in the bank’s 300-plus-year history.

Carney then travels to the edge of Canada’s Arctic to “reaffirm Canada’s Arctic security and sovereignty” before returning to Ottawa where he’s expected to call an election within days.

Carney has said he’s ready to meet with Trump if he shows respect for Canadian sovereignty. He said he doesn’t plan to visit Washington at the moment but hopes to have a phone call with the president soon.

Sweeping tariffs of 25% and Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st U.S. state have infuriated Canadians, and many are avoiding buying American goods when they can.

Carney’s government is reviewing the purchase of U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets in light of Trump’s trade war.

The governing Liberal Party had appeared poised for a historic election defeat this year until Trump declared economic war and repeatedly has said Canada should become the 51st state. Now the party and its new leader could come out on top.

Robert Bothwell, a professor of Canadian history and international relations at the University of Toronto, said Carney is wise not to visit Trump.

“There’s no point in going to Washington,” Bothwell said. “As (former Prime Minister Justin) Trudeau’s treatment shows, all that results in is a crude attempt by Trump to humiliate his guests. Nor can you have a rational conversation with someone who simply sits there and repeats disproven lies.”

Bothwell said that Trump demands respect, “but it’s often a one-way street, asking others to set aside their self-respect to bend to his will.”

Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said it is absolutely essential that Canada diversify trade amidst the ongoing trade war with the United States. More than 75% of Canada’s exports go to the U.S.

Béland said Arctic sovereignty is also a key issue for Canada.

“President Trump’s aggressive talk about both Canada and Greenland and the apparent rapprochement between Russia, a strong Arctic power, and the United States under Trump have increased anxieties about our control over this remote yet highly strategic region,” Béland said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com