Leapmotor booth at Munich IAA 2025 (Source: Stellantis)
Stellantis is in early talks to assemble electric vehicles from its Chinese partner Leapmotor at the idled Brampton, Ontario plant, according to Bloomberg — a factory that was supposed to be retooled for Jeep production with over $500 million in Canadian government subsidies.
The proposal has already drawn fierce opposition from Ontario Premier Doug Ford and the Unifor union, which represents about 3,000 laid-off workers at the plant.
From Jeep to Leapmotor: how we got here
The Brampton assembly plant has sat idle for over two years. Stellantis originally committed to retooling the facility for electric Jeep Compass production as part of a $3.6 billion investment in Ontario backed by more than $529 million in federal subsidies through Canada’s Strategic Innovation Fund. The deal required Stellantis to maintain an average of 4,475 full-time employees in Canada and keep production running at the plant through December 2035.
That commitment fell apart in October 2025, when Stellantis announced it was moving Jeep Compass production to its Illinois plant instead — a decision it blamed on US tariffs that made cross-border manufacturing uneconomical. Canada’s Industry Minister launched a formal dispute resolution process to recover some of the subsidy money, but the Brampton plant has remained dark ever since.
Advertisement – scroll for more content
Now, instead of the promised Jeep, Stellantis is proposing to bring in Leapmotor — the Chinese automaker it took a €1.5 billion (~$1.6 billion) stake in back in 2023, acquiring roughly 20% of the company and forming a joint venture called Leapmotor International to sell Chinese EVs globally.
The proposal involves assembling vehicles from “knock-down kits” — pre-manufactured parts shipped from China that get put together locally with minimal domestic supply chain involvement. It’s a model Leapmotor and other Chinese manufacturers already use in markets like Mexico and Brazil.
Ontario and Unifor push back hard
The reaction from Ontario’s government and the autoworkers’ union has been swift and blunt. According to the Globe and Mail, Unifor confirmed that Stellantis proposed the Leapmotor arrangement directly to the union.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford called the proposal “unacceptable” and said his government is “dead against” the talks. His main objection centers on the knock-down kit model, which he argued would employ a fraction of the workers a traditional assembly plant supports while cutting out Canadian parts suppliers entirely.
Unifor National President Lana Payne echoed those concerns in even starker terms: “This is not a proposal for assembly and manufacturing. It’s knock-down kits and it’s a huge problem.” She added that the arrangement “doesn’t use the Canadian supply chain” and would create “very few jobs assembling these knock-down kits.”
Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, warned that “allowing Chinese knockdown kits there would freeze out hundreds of Canadian auto parts suppliers.”
The concerns are well-grounded. A traditional auto assembly plant like Brampton at full production supports thousands of direct jobs plus tens of thousands more in the surrounding parts supply chain. A CKD assembly operation, by contrast, is closer to a warehouse with screwdrivers — most of the value-added manufacturing and the jobs that come with it stay in China.
The Canada-China EV tariff backdrop
The timing of this proposal is no accident. In January, Prime Minister Mark Carney reached a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping to slash Canada’s tariff on Chinese EVs from 100% to 6.1% — the most-favored-nation rate. The agreement caps Chinese EV imports at 49,000 vehicles initially, growing to 70,000 over five years, in exchange for China reducing tariffs on Canadian canola and other agricultural products.
That deal cracked open the door for Chinese automakers to enter the Canadian market, and Stellantis appears to be the first to walk through it. If the Leapmotor assembly plan moves forward, it would be the first major Chinese auto investment in Canada since that agreement.
But there’s a catch: the United States. Washington has made clear it won’t tolerate Chinese vehicles entering the US market through Canada. Former President Trump previously floated tariffs as high as 100% on Canadian goods if the country deepened Chinese auto ties. US Senator Bernie Moreno has proposed legislation to expand existing Chinese vehicle bans to include vehicles with Chinese-origin software, characterizing Chinese cars as a “cancer.”
Any Leapmotor vehicles assembled in Brampton would almost certainly face prohibitive tariffs if exported south of the border, limiting the market to Canada’s comparatively small domestic demand.
Stellantis’ Leapmotor bet keeps growing
Stellantis spokesperson LouAnn Gosselin said the company is “actively evaluating future programs for Brampton, with the objective to ensure that any investment decision is sustainable,” without confirming or denying the Leapmotor talks specifically.
The broader context is that Stellantis has been scrambling to cut EV costs across its sprawling brand portfolio, and Leapmotor’s technology has become central to that strategy. The Chinese automaker has delivered over 100,000 vehicles per quarter for four consecutive quarters and builds aggressively affordable EVs — including the Leapmotor A10, a $9,500 crossover that we recently highlighted as the kind of affordable EV that Stellantis desperately needs in North America.
But there’s a massive difference between leveraging Leapmotor’s technology and cost engineering across Stellantis brands and simply assembling Chinese knock-down kits on Canadian soil. The former creates lasting industrial value; the latter is closer to an import workaround.
Electrek’s Take
There are arguments for both sides here. Canadian taxpayers put more than half a billion dollars into the Brampton plant on the promise of Jeep EV production and thousands of manufacturing jobs. Stellantis broke that promise by moving Compass production to Illinois, and now its replacement plan is to ship pre-built Chinese car parts to Brampton and call the resulting assembly jobs a “future program.”
We’ve been covering Leapmotor’s impressive EV lineup extensively, and there’s no question the company builds compelling, affordable electric vehicles. Stellantis’ 20% stake and the Leapmotor International joint venture make strategic sense as a way to bring competitive EV technology to Western markets. But doing it through knock-down kit assembly is the lowest-value version of that strategy — one designed to skirt tariffs while creating minimal local employment.
However, a significant part of Carney’s plan in opening up to Chinese automakers is to learn from them and help build out Canada’s manufacturing expertise over time, much as China itself did by inviting other companies.
If that’s the best the Brampton plant can get right now, it might still be a step in the right direction with increasingly more local parts over time.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
