Stellantis clarifies Leapmotor sales comments
To recap: Stellantis group CEO Antonio Filosa recently made questionable claims about Leapmotor’s performance on the German market, stating that it had outsold BYD in Germany. BYD quickly responded to the claims, releasing sales data for Germany from January to August 2025, demonstrating far higher sales than Leapmotor in that period.
Here, BYD highlighted 8,610 new registrations of BYD vehicles in the year-to-date, with Leapmotor only recording 3,536 registrations. Further data from Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) showed that BYD’s retort was broadly accurate, albeit with some inaccuracies in the numbers (KBA recording 8,563 new BYDs in Germany since January – including 1,114 in August – versus 3,351 Leapmotor registrations in the year-to-date and 826 registrations in August).
Stellantis has since issued a statement clarifying Antonio Filosa’s remarks, explaining that he was referring solely to sales of battery electric vehicles in Germany in August.
A spokesperson said: “Antonio Filosa’s statement about Leapmotor’s sales of battery electric vehicle (BEV) in Germany in the month of August 2025 are accurate and confirmed by the national industry’s database. In August 2025, in Germany, Leapmotor was the best-selling Chinese BEV brand and Leapmotor T03 was the best-selling Chinese BEV.”
In this context, one point is crucial: Stellantis places its emphasis on battery-electric vehicles (BEVs). And here, the KBA data indeed show that Leapmotor reached 716 BEV registrations in Germany in August, while BYD recorded only 684 BEV registrations. The model breakdown also backs Stellantis: the Leapmotor T03 registered 606 new units in August in Germany, while BYD’s bestseller, the Seal U, reached only 436 new registrations.
However, when looking at the total number of new registrations – as BYD did in its dispute with Stellantis – BYD actually outperformed Leapmotor in Germany in August. BYD registered a total of 1,114 vehicles that month, while Leapmotor recorded 826 registrations. The reason lies in BYD’s stronger performance with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs): BYD achieved 429 PHEVs, while Leapmotor registered 110 PHEVs.
In summary, Stellantis boss Filosa was correct in stating that Leapmotor sold more BEVs than BYD in Germany in August. However, the statement was taken out of context twice: first, BYD referred to the period from January to August, and second, it included all vehicle sales including PHEVs instead of focusing solely on BEVs.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article stated that Leapmotor had only ranked ahead of BYD in the model ranking in August. At that time, we were not aware that Antonio Filosa had only referred to BEVs and not to total sales.
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