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 now since issued a statement clarifying Antonio Filosa’s remarks, saying he was only referring to sales of the Leapmotor T03 in Germany in August, which ranked as the best-selling Chinese EV that month.
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.”
Given the data provided by both the KBA and BYD, it seems that Leapmotor’s claim of being the ‘best-selling Chinese BEV brand’ in Germany that month doesn’t actually stand up to scrutiny. KBA data does, however, show that in August the Leapmotor T03 sold 606 units while BYD’s bestseller, the SEAL U, only sold 436 units. So Filosa is half-right: the T03 was the best selling Chinese BEV, but the brand itself certainly did not come out on top of the Chinese brands overall.
