Europe’s fastest-growing Chinese EV brand is planning a second, higher-priced label for 2027. Like BYD has Denza, Leapmotor wants its own luxury brand. More out of a necessity than a technical ambition. But can a budget brand pull it off?
Leapmotor, the Stellantis-backed Chinese EV maker that last year posted its first annual profit, is preparing to move well beyond its affordable roots. According to the Chinese media outlet LatePost Auto, which cites multiple independent sources, the company plans to launch a second brand in 2027 targeting vehicles priced above 300,000 yuan.
The Chinese price, which is around €40,000, might not reflect this, but it suggests the brand wants to move into premium territory. No name, design language, or specific models have been disclosed yet.
Structural tension
The strategy, which isn’t officially confirmed by Leapmotor, isn’t without reason and isn’t hard to see. A structural tension runs through much of China’s EV industry: volume without margins.
Leapmotor sold 596,555 vehicles in 2025, more than double the year before, but its average selling price was just 125,000 yuan (€16,000), and net profit per vehicle was 905 yuan, or about €116.
A significant portion of the brand’s annual profit came from carbon credit sales rather than vehicle margin. Scaling to 1 million units, as the company has publicly targeted for 2026, does not automatically fix that problem.
The playbook is familiar. To mimic Audi, Toyota created Lexus back in the day. Hyundai did Genesis. BYD built Denza and Yangwang. Rebranding some scaled technology and selling it at a higher price makes economic sense. The big difference is that the aforementioned brands were targeting the US first and foremost, a market that remains off-limits to Chinese brands.
So, Leapmotor will need to focus on its home ground, where premium players are already abundant. What sets Leapmotor apart from most Chinese premium ‘try-outs’ is the Stellantis partnership. The 51/49 joint venture, through which Leapmotor sells its vehicles across Europe via Stellantis’s dealer network, provides it with the infrastructure that Chinese start-ups typically have to build from scratch.
Maserati as a model?
Stellantis’s Maserati experience, though a struggling division, could prove relevant in luxury retail operations and after-sales expectations. It is a different infrastructure that volume-focused brands routinely underestimate.
The risks are real. Brand credibility in the premium price range takes years to establish, and if the new label shares platforms or supply chains with the main brand too visibly, maintaining a credible price premium becomes structurally difficult.
However, as Stellantis seeks to cross-develop models based on Leapmotor’s technology, the opposite could become a working method for a Leapmotor Deluxe: using Maserati technology with a Chinese face and user experience could possibly benefit both brands and put Leapmotor head-to-head with Yangwang.
What is clear is that for a company that turned its first annual profit less than two months ago on razor-thin margins, the premium gamble is less a luxury and more a commercial necessity.
