By Gilles Guillaume and Giulio Piovaccari
PARIS, May 19 (Reuters) – Stellantis is due to announce a joint venture with Dongfeng and a deal to build at least one fully electric Voyah brand vehicle for the state-owned Chinese carmaker at the Franco-Italian company’s factory in Rennes, France, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The joint venture will be 51% owned by Stellantis, according to a letter of intent signed by the two companies, one of the sources said. The deal could be announced as early as Wednesday morning, the two sources added.
Voyah is Dongfeng’s luxury brand. Building its vehicle in a French factory would enable the company to avoid European Union tariffs on Chinese-made EVs.
The move builds on a deal announced last week under which Dongfeng will make Jeep and Peugeot brand cars in China. Stellantis is due to hold a capital markets day on Thursday, where CEO Antonio Filosa is expected to pitch investors on plans to regain market share in North America and Europe.
The venture also puts Stellantis at the forefront of efforts by traditional automakers to get Chinese vehicle companies to make use of underutilized factories across Europe.
Details of the vehicle and the European joint venture between Stellantis and Dongfeng have not been previously reported.
Stellantis declined to comment. Dongfeng did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dongfeng is a relative newcomer to Europe and only sells cars in a handful of markets, including Italy and Poland. In 2025, the company only sold 3,210 Dongfeng and Voyah brand vehicles across Europe, according to data from Dataforce.
Chinese carmakers such as Chery are actively seeking to rent excess factory capacity from European automakers as a speedy route to manufacturing vehicles in the region. Magna is already producing cars for Xpeng and GAC at a factory in Austria.
Facing a brutal EV price war at home in China, the world’s largest car market, Chinese automakers are expanding rapidly in search of greater sales volume and profits.
At the Beijing car show last month, Dongfeng said it is targeting global sales of 4 million vehicles by 2030, with more than 40% of that expected to come from overseas markets.
Earlier this month Stellantis announced a deal with Chinese partner Leapmotor to build cars jointly in Spain. The two automakers set up a joint venture in 2023, in which Stellantis has a 51% stake.
Rival Volkswagen has also said it is weighing whether to share its European factory capacity with Chinese carmakers.
The Rennes plant, built in 1960 to help industrialize the remote region of Brittany, produced over 400,000 vehicles annually on three assembly lines in the early 2000s.
But it was restructured in the 2010s and today only produces one model – the Citroen C5 Aircross SUV – on just one line.
(Reporting Gilles Guillaume in Paris and Giulio Piovaccari in Milan; editing by Nick Carey, Mike Colias and Cynthia Osterman)
