Leapmotor launch in the UK gained early momentum after the brand moved quickly to capitalise on consumer interest around the Government’s electric car grant, according to Stellantis UK chief Eurig Druce.
Speaking to Autotrader as part of its Insight interview series, Druce said Leapmotor’s fast start in the UK was driven by a combination of marketing agility and a compelling product plan that allowed the new EV brand to build awareness quickly in a crowded market.
He said the brand’s launch really started when the Government announced its electric car grant in July 2025, even though Leapmotor did not qualify for the scheme.
Druce said the announcement created a surge in online search interest as consumers looked for information about which electric vehicles would benefit from support. Stellantis and Leapmotor chose to treat that moment as an opportunity rather than a setback.
“There are two approaches when this kind of news breaks,” Druce said. “You can put your head in the sand and say, ‘This is not good for us,’ or you turn that into the ultimate opportunity.”
Leapmotor responded by launching its own grant-style support, including a £3,750 Leap grant for the C10 family SUV and a £1,500 offer on its other model, the compact T03 city car.
Druce said the speed of the response helped the brand dominate search visibility around the EV grant conversation within 24 hours of the Government announcement.
“If you took a Google search page for EV car grant within 24 hours of the Government launching, the whole page was dominated by Leapmotor coverage,” he said.
That gave Leapmotor “a really strong surge of interest” and coverage at a point when the brand was still relatively unknown in the UK.
Marketing speed backed by product plan
Druce said Leapmotor’s launch strategy worked because the marketing response was supported by a strong product plan.
The brand entered the UK with what Druce described as “two bookends”: the T03 city car and the larger C10 SUV. It has since moved to fill the space between those two models, with the B10 arriving as a C-SUV and a six-model UK line-up expected by the end of 2026.
“We started off with two bookends, if you like, the smallest car in the range and the largest car in the range, with the T03 and C10, and we’ve been very quickly filling the gaps in between,” he said, describing the pace of expansion as “astonishingly quick”.
Affordability central to the offer
Druce said the brand gives Stellantis an entry point into a lower-cost part of the EV market at a time when consumer affordability remains one of the biggest barriers to electric vehicle adoption adding that Leapmotor’s brand positioning is built around the idea of “demand more”, with high specification levels and a simplified customer proposition.
Leapmotor models are offered with one specification, positioned at the top end, with equipment already included. The approach is intended to avoid the sense that an affordable EV means accepting a stripped-back product.
New customers for Stellantis
Druce said Leapmotor is also bringing new customers into the Stellantis business rather than simply taking buyers from its existing brands.
“Ninety-five per cent of Leapmotor customers are not Stellantis customers. They’ve never bought one of my brands previously,” Druce said, adding that that gave Leapmotor “true incrementality” within the Stellantis portfolio.
Leapmotor this week announced it has passed 1.5 million vehicle deliveries worldwide, marking another milestone in the Chinese EV brand’s rapid global expansion.
The figure was reached just eight months after Leapmotor crossed the one million-delivery mark, underlining the pace of growth as the brand scales internationally through the Leapmotor International joint venture with Stellantis.
Its first 500,000 deliveries took 64 months, while the second 500,000 took 12 months. The latest 500,000 were achieved in eight months.
Further expansion in the UK is planned, including the B05 hatchback and B03X compact SUV, both set to arrive in the UK this year, as Leapmotor continues to broaden its appeal across key segments of the market.