Leapmotor's Record July Deliveries Coincide With Rural Subsidy Absence
Leapmotor hit a record 101,267 global deliveries in July, yet skipped China's rural EV subsidy campaign, citing thin margins and existing rural store coverage as it pushes overseas.
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Leapmotor delivered 101,267 vehicles globally in July, up 102% year-on-year and 8.45% from June, according to the company. The record month comes as the automaker sits out China's 2026 "New Energy Vehicles to the Countryside" initiative, a subsidy campaign whose eligible list of 155 models does not include any Leapmotor vehicle.
Notably, that list does feature models priced above 200,000 yuan such as the Xiaomi SU7 and Tesla Model 3, while Leapmotor's mainstream products are priced around 100,000 yuan, with some under 70,000 yuan. A Leapmotor employee named Ajing said the campaign list is not strictly screened, and automakers that apply are easily selected. However, Leapmotor's T03, C01, C10, and C11 were on the list in 2024 and 2025, but its current mainstream models—the A05, A10, and B10—are all new for 2026.
A Leapmotor salesperson named Chen said the campaign aims to make car buying in townships as convenient as in cities, but Leapmotor already has a large number of stores not far from townships, so people there can easily buy Leapmotor cars even without the campaign. By the end of 2025, Leapmotor had 993 stores in mainland China, with about 53% in third-tier and lower-tier cities, and 313 county-level stores, roughly 32% of the total.
Ajing also cited profit margins as a factor: "Participating in the rural campaign requires additional subsidies. Leapmotor's profit is already very low now, while other automakers still have profit margins, so of course they choose to participate in the campaign." The margin pressure is visible in Leapmotor's first-quarter 2026 results: revenue reached 108.2 billion yuan, up 8% year-on-year, but the quarterly loss widened to 3.9 billion yuan, three times the loss in the same period last year. Gross margin stood at 9.4%, down 5.6 percentage points from the 15% recorded in the fourth quarter of 2025. Research and development spending climbed to 10.4 billion yuan, up over 30% year-on-year, representing about 9.6% of revenue, up 1.6 percentage points from a year earlier.
Despite these domestic headwinds, Leapmotor's overseas push is accelerating. In the first half of 2026, deliveries totaled 356,500 vehicles, up 60.8% year-on-year, with June deliveries at 93,000 units, up 95% year-on-year. Exports in the first quarter reached 40,901 vehicles, up 442% year-on-year, accounting for 37.1% of total sales, compared with total exports of 67,052 vehicles for all of 2025. In Europe, Leapmotor registered over 11,000 vehicles in March 2026, up 754% year-on-year, and in Italy, registrations soared to 5,513 units, up 2827% year-on-year. By March 2026, Leapmotor held a 33.5% market share in Italy's pure electric vehicle market, supported by the Stellantis Group in its overseas expansion.