The Same Admission, Two Different Partners

Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa told reporters after the company's Q2 2026 earnings call that Stellantis will lean harder on Leapmotor, its Chinese joint-venture partner, to counter BYD and Chery. New European platforms, he said, are being engineered to reach the Chinese level of competitiveness.

That's a company choosing deeper dependency on a Chinese partner, out loud. Volkswagen is leaning on an outside partner too, just a different one. VW's answer to similar competitive pressures is a joint venture with Rivian, the American EV maker it's paying to co-develop the software architecture VW can't build on its own.

Both companies are buying something they can't deliver in-house, something core enough to their survival that neither one is hiding it.

Stellantis holds two positions in Leapmotor. It owns approximately 20% of Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology Co., the Chinese parent, bought in October 2023 under then-CEO Carlos Tavares. It also holds 51% of Leapmotor International, the joint venture with exclusive rights to sell and build Leapmotor vehicles outside Greater China.

The equity stake buys upside. It doesn't buy control of the technology. I covered that gap already in an earlier TaaSMaster memo, "The Platform Belongs to Leapmotor. The Brand Belongs to Stellantis. Where Does the Margin Go?"

In that memo, the architecture, electronics, and software stack in the Opel O3U project belong to Leapmotor. Stellantis only contributes exterior design and brand identity.

VW's version of this bet is bigger. It has pledged nearly $6 billion to Rivian and its RV Tech joint venture. VW has become Rivian's largest shareholder with a stake near 16%, which could rise to 20% if milestones are hit. This would put VW in about the same range as Stellantis's Leapmotor position.

It would be convenient if Stellantis simply had the technology and only needed Leapmotor's manufacturing cost advantage to compete on price. The record doesn't support that.

Stellantis announced its own answer to vehicle software in 2021 that it called STLA Brain. Tavares said at the time that software "should not be turned over to subcontractors but kept in-house." The platform was supposed to launch in 2024. Stellantis is still trying to expand STLA Brain's development, five years after that promise.

Volkswagen's version of this story is better known. VW's software subsidiary Cariad has spent years missing deadlines and delaying launches before the automaker turned to Rivian.

Stellantis has never conceded the failure of STLA Brain the way VW has conceded Cariad. That does not mean the underlying problem is different. It only suggests one company has admitted failure, while the other automaker has not admitted it yet.

Two analysts have raised versions of the same concern about Stellantis. Adrien Brasi at Alphavalue asked in Bloomberg whether Leapmotor's technology will strengthen Stellantis's brands or eventually overshadow them. Julia Poliscanova at Transport & Environment has separately called these China tie-ups a short-term win that masks longer-term risk for legacy automakers generally.

UBS analyst Patrick Hummel raised a similar question when the Rivian deal was first announced, writing that VW's Cariad would need to be "right-sized to avoid double-spending." That prediction hasn't held up so far.

I don't think it matters much whether Stellantis chose this path before a major crisis, while VW backed into Rivian after Cariad had already failed.

Two automakers have invested in smaller car companies to do something critical to their own survival that neither one could do by itself.

That's the bet both companies are actually making. It’s important for the partnerships to work. But it’s critical that the partnerships last long enough before either smaller partner outgrows the need for its larger automotive investor.

This analysis extends TaaSMaster's cost structure framework from "GM Funds Transition. VW Warns of Crisis. What's the Difference?" to a capability question that memo didn't ask directly. It also builds on the mutual-dependency mechanics already covered in "The Platform Belongs to Leapmotor. The Brand Belongs to Stellantis. Where Does the Margin Go?"

Stellantis and Leapmotor reporting: Giulio Piovaccari, Reuters, Q2 2026 earnings coverage; Stellantis Media and investor relations; Nick Carey, Nora Eckert, and Joseph White, Reuters, on the original 2023 stake.

Leapmotor technology and vertical integration: Leapmotor Media, Gasgoo, Longbridge, Fleet World, and Grokipedia, on the Four-Leaf Clover / Leap 3.0 architecture and in-house component ratio.

Mexico and US/Canada reporting: Autoblog; Automotive World; Carscoops; Detroit News; Benzinga.

STLA Brain reporting: WardsAuto; Applied Intuition; Stellantis Media.

Analyst commentary: Adrien Brasi, Alphavalue, via Bloomberg; Julia Poliscanova, Transport & Environment, via CNBC; UBS analyst note, via Fortune, on the original 2024 Rivian deal announcement.

Volkswagen and Rivian reporting: Volkswagen Group investor relations and press releases; Quartr and Yahoo Finance earnings transcripts; InsideEVs and Motor Illustrated on RV Tech milestones; Manager Magazin, via EV.com, on the January 2026 task force and Cariad cost overruns; Electrek on the May 2026 shareholder update.

Prior TaaSMaster analysis: "The Platform Belongs to Leapmotor. The Brand Belongs to Stellantis. Where Does the Margin Go?"; "GM Funds Transition. VW Warns of Crisis. What's the Difference?"

If you have a perspective or disagreement, reply directly. I read every response.