Stellantis Plans to Manufacture Voyah for Dongfeng in France to Dodge EU Tariffs

According to Reuters, Stellantis is about to announce a joint venture with Dongfeng Motor to contract manufacture at least one full electric vehicle for the Chinese state-owned automotive company's Voyah brand at its factory in Rennes, France. Based on the letter of intent signed by the two companies, Stellantis will hold 51% of the shares in the joint venture, and the deal might be officially announced to the public as early as Wednesday morning.

Voyah is the high-end electric vehicle brand under Dongfeng. Producing locally in France means Dongfeng can directly avoid the tariffs imposed by the EU on electric vehicles made in China. Currently, Dongfeng's presence in the European market is still very limited - in 2025, the combined annual sales of Dongfeng and the Voyah brand in Europe were only 3210 units, mainly concentrated in Italy and Poland.

This cooperation is a continuation of a series of recent interactions between the two parties. Last week, Dongfeng just announced that it will produce Jeep and Peugeot brand models for Stellantis in China. Stellantis will also hold a Capital Markets Day on Thursday this week, where CEO Antonio Filosa will outline his plans to reclaim market share in North America and Europe to investors.

The Rennes factory was built in 1960 and had an annual production capacity of over 400,000 vehicles in the early 21st century; now, after restructuring, it only has one production line, producing only the Citroen C5 Aircross model, with a severely idle capacity. Introducing the production of Dongfeng Voyah is a step for Stellantis to revitalize idle capacity, and it also fits with the general path recently explored by European traditional automakers, which is "using factories to exchange for markets".

This trend is accelerating. Chinese automakers such as Chery are actively seeking to rent production capacity in European factories; Magna's factory in Austria is already contract manufacturing for Xiaopeng and GAC; Volkswagen also said it is assessing whether to open European production capacity to Chinese car companies. Under the pressure of domestic price wars, Chinese automakers are accelerating their overseas expansion, with local European production becoming a key path to bypass tariff barriers and open up markets.