‘You can guess what type of products they are’: Leapmotor edges closer to a ute

Leapmotor’s international product chief has come as close as he will to confirming a ute is under study, telling Australian media the company held “a very, very interesting conversation” this week about building products for markets like Australia “for which maybe another market there is no demand, and you can guess what type of products they are.”

Francesco Giacalone, head of product and marketing for Leapmotor International, made the comments to CarsGuide at the global launch of the B03X compact SUV, on sale in New Zealand from $37,990. Pressed on whether he meant a pick-up, he replied: “I never say so.”

The ute question has followed Leapmotor for 18 months. Giacalone told Australian media early in 2025 that headquarters had asked him to assess global demand for pick-ups and light commercials. Leapmotor International chief executive Tianshu Xin said last December that nothing was on the cards but a ute could be developed, most likely electric, while pointing out that partner Stellantis already builds the Ram. Leapmotor Australia’s product planner Rick Crichton said in February the idea was “very much alive internally”, and in April Giacalone set out the constraint: Australia alone could not justify a standalone model.

This week’s comments put a strategy around that constraint. “The regionalisation of our strategy implies that there are demands that, in this moment, are not European centric,” Giacalone says. “Europe is not a pick-up market. Brazil is. Australia maybe.” Brazil represents about 30% of the Leapmotor’s South American registrations, and combining its ute demand with Australia’s is the volume argument. “So there could be interest to develop that things. But there are a lot of ideas. The same way there are ideas about vans, the same ideas about even bigger, large SUVs.”

The engineering obstacle stands. Leapmotor has no ladder-frame architecture, and Giacalone ruled one out, saying a large off-road SUV of the Geely Battleship 700 kind “is not the right off-road brand” for Leapmotor, though a rugged-looking large SUV above the D19 is being considered from a design point of view. A Leapmotor ute would therefore be a monocoque, most likely carrying the range-extender system that gives the C10 Ultra Hybrid 145km of electric range and 950km combined, a configuration closer to the Bronco Basecamp Ford confirmed for New Zealand this week than to a Ranger.

The market it would enter here is filling fast. BYD’s Shark 6 was the fourth best-selling ute outright in August, GWM priced the Cannon Hi4-T plug-in at $58,990 yesterday, and Chery’s Stockman and a Geely plug-in ute are due in Australia. Leapmotor’s New Zealand range currently runs to the C10, B10, B05 and B03X, all SUVs and hatchbacks; its A10, the B03X’s Chinese name, was China’s second best-selling car in August.

The D19 large SUV will be shown in global specification at the Paris motor show next month. A ute, on Giacalone’s own words, remains an idea rather than a programme.