Leapmotor will not sell Europe the 800 V B10 China already has
Leapmotor will keep selling Europe the B10 that China replaced in July
Leapmotor International will skip the updated B10 that went on sale in China on 16 July, Danilo Annese, its commercial head for Enlarged Europe, told journalists at the international launch of the B03X in Spain. The 800 V car with the bigger battery stays at home. Europe keeps the B10 it has been able to order since July 2025, and the older C10 gets a hardware update in early 2027 instead.
China's July B10 update added 800 V, a 69.7 kWh battery and 252 hp
The B10 went on sale in China in April 2025 and was overhauled fifteen months later. Pre-orders opened on 8 July and sales on 16 July. The cheaper grades moved from a 56.2 kWh to a 60.8 kWh lithium iron phosphate pack for 540 km on China's CLTC cycle, and the top grades adopted an 800 V electrical system with a 69.7 kWh battery, 610 km CLTC and a rear motor producing 252 hp and 260 Nm. Charging from 30 to 80 percent takes 16 minutes, four fewer than in the 400 V car it replaced. Chinese prices run from 99,800 to 125,800 yuan, around 14,700 to 18,600 dollars at the current rate.
Europe's B10 stays at 400 V, 67.1 kWh and 434 km WLTP from €32,900
The B10 Europe has been able to order since July 2025 is the pre-update car, the one we drove earlier this year. It pairs a 218 hp rear motor with either a 56.2 kWh LFP battery for 361 km WLTP or a 67.1 kWh NMC pack for 434 km, on a 400 V system. German list prices are €29,900 and €32,900. Set against the Chinese update, that is 2.6 kWh less battery, 34 hp less power and a slower charging curve for roughly double the money, once the EU's tariffs on Chinese-built cars and Stellantis's distribution margin are in the price. The gap is real, and Leapmotor is choosing to leave it there.
Danilo Annese says Europe is a lease market that punishes a better car every few months
Annese's reasoning is about the customer, not the engineering. Chinese buyers respond to new products and frequent updates, he said, while Europe is overwhelmingly a replacement market where cars are financed or leased, and a materially better version arriving every few months confuses buyers and weakens the value of the car they have just bought. He called 800 V worthwhile technology and did not rule it out for a later B10, but questioned changing a car that customers outside China were only beginning to understand. Leapmotor International will still adopt Chinese changes that materially improve a car or fix a hardware fault an over-the-air update cannot reach. Smaller ones it may skip in favour of the next big step.
The C10 runs LEAP 3.0 hardware, and its update lands in early 2027
The C10 was Leapmotor's first car in Europe, on sale since September 2024, and it is getting the treatment the B10 is not. Annese described an "evolution" due in early 2027: "It is a piece of hardware, and of course software comes with that piece of hardware," not a facelift and not a new generation. Tianyue Zhong, Leapmotor's global head of product planning, said separately that a C10 on the company's newer electronic architecture was months away. The current car sits on the LEAP 3.0 architecture, which is why it has never offered native Apple CarPlay or Android Auto and cannot gain them over the air; the B10, B05 and B03X run newer electronics and have both. Leapmotor has not said whether the new hardware is that screen, whether existing C10s can be retrofitted, or whether the electric and range-extender versions change together.
Leapmotor registered 48,261 cars in Europe in the first half of 2026
The decision is being taken from strength. ACEA counted 48,261 Leapmotor registrations in the EU in the first half of 2026, up 526.7 percent and ahead of Porsche, through Stellantis's dealer network. Stellantis owns 51 percent of Leapmotor International, the joint venture that sells the cars outside China, and the brand has grown faster than any other on the continent this year on a range that starts with the B03X at €23,995. A skipped update is the first time the brand has publicly said no to something from Hangzhou, and the reason it gives is a European one.
AutoNext Take
Leapmotor has spent two years selling Europe the newest thing out of China, and it has just decided that the newest thing is a liability. That is a lease company's logic, not an engineer's, and it is the right one for this market: a B10 financed over 48 months in Antwerp or Lyon needs a residual value in 2030, and a 610 km, 800 V twin at the same dealer eighteen months after delivery is the fastest way to destroy one. Tesla taught Europe that lesson with price cuts in 2023. Leapmotor is trying not to teach it again with hardware.
The 800 V B10 still comes to Europe, because Annese would not have defended the technology otherwise, and the price it arrives at will say what this policy was worth. If the next B10 reaches European order books before the end of 2027 at the same €32,900 as today's 67.1 kWh car, current owners will have been protected for a year and then undercut anyway. If it lands above it, as an extra grade rather than a replacement, the skip was a residual-value policy and not a stock-clearing one. Watch the C10 too: if the early-2027 hardware turns out to be LEAP 3.5 with CarPlay, and nobody with a 2025 car can have it, Leapmotor will have made the same trade twice.
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