Stellantis Hands Leapmotor a Spot on the Zaragoza Line — Chinese-Designed B05 Joins the Opel Corsa and Peugeot 208 at €24,500 in Portugal, Wiping the 38.1% Tariff and Undercutting the Peugeot E-308 by Ten Thousand Euros

Stellantis announced on Friday that the Chinese electric saloon Leapmotor B05 — and its B10 sibling — will start rolling out of the group's Zaragoza (Saragoça) plant in northern Spain, the same Figueruelas factory that already builds the Opel Corsa, Peugeot 208, Citroën C3 Aircross and Lancia Ypsilon. The move turns Leapmotor from a Chinese import into a European-built EV in a single decision, and it does so on the floor of an Iberian plant whose lineage stretches back to the original GM Spain investment of 1982.

The mechanics are unsentimental. Cars built outside the EU and originating from China currently attract a 38.1% anti-subsidy duty — Brussels's response to state aid that the World Trade Organization deemed illegal — stacked on top of the standard 10% common external import tariff on automobiles. Together that is enough to break the Chinese price advantage at the border. Producing the same model inside the customs union zeros both lines on a Stellantis sticker.

What the deal actually means commercially

Stellantis already owns 20% of Leapmotor, a stake bought in 2023 after the French-Italian-American group abandoned its own Chinese factories in 2022. Three years on, the partnership has graduated from "sell Chinese cars in Stellantis dealerships" to "build Chinese cars in Stellantis factories." The B05 will be sold in the same showroom, and increasingly by the same salesperson, who is also expected to move you into a Peugeot E-308.

That last detail is the awkward one. On the Leapmotor Portugal site the B05 is currently offered at €24,500 with a launch promotion (around €26,900 list), with two battery options of 56.2 kWh and 67.1 kWh giving 400 km and 482 km of WLTP range and 170 kW DC fast charging. The Peugeot E-308 — also a Stellantis car, also built on Stellantis platforms, also sold in Stellantis showrooms — lists at €35,195 on Peugeot's Portuguese website, with a 55.4 kWh battery, 450 km of range and 100 kW charging.

That is roughly €10,000 of in-house arbitrage sitting between two cars that will share dealership floor space. In Italy, where the B05 has already launched, the gap is closer to €14,000. The internal cannibalisation risk is precisely why Carlos Tavares's successor team has had to argue publicly that Leapmotor will recruit conquest buyers — Tesla intenders, Volkswagen ID.3 hesitants, MG4 cross-shoppers — rather than simply hollow out Peugeot, Opel and Citroën's order books.

Iberian context: where Portugal sits

Stellantis's Iberian footprint is heavily Spanish: Figueruelas (Zaragoza) for B-segment hatchbacks and small SUVs, Vigo for light commercial vehicles, and historic Madrid sites now wound down. Portugal's piece is the Mangualde plant in the Beira interior, which builds the Peugeot Partner, Citroën Berlingo and Opel Combo light vans plus their electric K-Zero variants. Mangualde is not on the Leapmotor roadmap — yet — but it is now the clearest near-shore candidate if the partnership extends to a passenger-vehicle line beyond the B05/B10.

For Portugal the immediate effect is on the road, not the factory floor. Roughly 8% of new-car registrations in 2025 were Chinese-brand vehicles (MG, BYD, Omoda, GWM and Leapmotor combined), and the entry of a tariff-free, dealer-network-supported Chinese EV under €25,000 will accelerate that number quickly. Portuguese buyers of B-segment EVs were the most price-sensitive cohort in Europe in 2025, and a sub-€25k five-door electric saloon with 400 km of range is a price point that has not existed before from a brand with proper aftersales.

Tariff politics, briefly

The 38.1% Chinese-EV duty was set by the Commission in October 2024 after a state-aid investigation. Beijing has since opened retaliatory probes into European pork and brandy and has been pushing for a price-undertaking deal that would replace the tariff with a minimum-price commitment. The Stellantis–Leapmotor production move effectively neutralises the duty for the most price-competitive model in the Chinese line-up, which weakens the Commission's leverage in the price-undertaking talks. Other Chinese makers — BYD at Szeged in Hungary, Chery in Spain, Omoda also Spain-bound — are following the same playbook.

What This Means for Expats

• If you're shopping for a sub-€30k EV: The B05 at €24,500 promotional / €26,900 list is now the cheapest C-segment electric saloon with 400 km of range and a national service network in Portugal. Verify the warranty (8-year battery) and ask the dealer for the Origem da União Europeia stamp on the EU type-approval, which is the line that confirms the tariff-free Spanish build.
• If you have an EV charger at home: The 170 kW DC charging spec is fast for the price tier but unhelpful on a domestic 7.4 kW wallbox. Plan around AC charging speed (around 11 kW), not the headline DC number.
• Used-car implications: A €10,000 price cliff between Leapmotor and equivalent Stellantis stablemates will start to drag residual values on 2024–2025 Peugeot E-208s and E-308s. If you're considering a used Peugeot EV, expect dealer trade-in values to soften over the next 6–12 months.
• If you're importing a car under the Transferência de Residência regime: An EU-built Leapmotor follows the standard ISV/IUC EV path; a Chinese-built Leapmotor B01 (still imported from Hangzhou) attracts the 38.1% extra. Check the VIN's first character — "V" indicates Spain-built — before signing.
• For your IUC and IPO calendar: EVs continue to pay the bottom-bracket €37.47 light-vehicle IUC tariff regardless of brand origin. The IPO interval rules are unchanged.
• If you work in Mangualde: No formal announcement of expanded production, but supplier scouts have begun visiting the Beira-region tier-2 cluster around Viseu. Watch the autumn pay-round disclosures.

What to watch next

The first Spanish-built B05s are scheduled to leave Figueruelas in the third quarter of 2026 and reach Portuguese dealers by the end of the year. The volume question — how quickly Stellantis ramps the line, and at whose expense within its own brand portfolio — is the one that will decide whether 2027 becomes the year European-built Chinese EVs go from curiosity to default option in Portugal's sub-€30k segment.