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Leapmotor officially enters Mexico with Stellantis and Mopar support.

Range-extended B10 SUV claims nearly 620 miles between fuel stops.

100% tariffs and anti-Chinese software regs currently prevent US entry.

Chinese automakers have spent the past few years expanding almost everywhere they can. Now Leapmotor has finally reached North America, although not quite in the way some expected. Its first stop isn’t Canada but Mexico, where the Stellantis-backed brand has officially launched the B10 SUV.

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The B10 has spent more than a year being adapted for local conditions before reaching showrooms, where it’s priced at MX$575,000 (US$33,000). Engineers fine tuned it to cope with everything from high altitude roads to desert heat and tropical humidity, while also completing the certification process required for the Mexican market. More models, including the larger C10 and C16 SUVs, are expected to arrive later.

Related: The Plant That Built Dodge’s Last Hellcat Muscle Cars Could Make Chinese EVs Next

Mexico doesn’t get the fully electric B10s sold in Europe , instead focusing only on the range-extender powertrain. A 1.5-liter combustion engine never drives the wheels directly, but acts as a generator for an 18.8 kWh battery that feeds a 215 hp (218 PS / 160 kW) electric motor. Leapmotor claims a combined driving range of up to 615 miles (990 km) before you’ll need to refuel and recharge.

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The rollout has been made possible by Stellantis, which owns roughly 20 percent of Leapmotor and controls the international joint venture responsible for selling the brand outside China. Rather than starting from scratch, Leapmotor is using Stellantis dealerships, with more than 40 sales outlets already open in Mexico. Service and parts support come through Mopar’s existing nationwide network.

First Mexico, Then Canada

Canada, which recently agreed to take up to 49,000 Chinese cars each year in exchange for lower tariffs on its canola exports, could eventually become the next piece of the puzzle, particularly as Stellantis considers future manufacturing options there. Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa has previously said there’s room for the brand in Mexico and possibly Canada, but “no space” in the United States for now, Automotive World reports.

Between steep tariffs on Chinese built EVs and restrictions surrounding connected vehicle technology which recently forced Polestar out of the US , the American market remains effectively closed. But for now, Mexico marks an important milestone for Leapmotor as it pushes toward an ambitious target of delivering one million vehicles worldwide this year.

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Leapmotor/Stellantis/Wikimedia Commons

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Around 100,000 years ago, an early Homo sapiens man was probably stabbed in the face with a sharp stone tool and later buried in a cave in what is now Israel, archaeologists have determined. The Stone Age cold case appears to be the earliest evidence of this kind of interpersonal violence, according to the research team.

In a study published June 30 in the journal Scientific Reports , the international team of researchers closely examined the skull and lower jaw of a person who was deliberately buried in Qafzeh cave in Israel during the Middle Paleolithic period.

At least 27 people were buried in Qafzeh cave between about 145,000 and 92,000 years ago, making them some of the earliest members of our species to be found outside Africa. Previous analysis of the skeletons, which were excavated between the 1930s and 1970s, revealed that two people had head injuries resulting from blunt trauma.

But the new analysis, which employed microscopic and micro-CT scanning techniques, revealed that Qafzeh 25, an adult male, had a cut mark across his lower left jaw that affected one of his bicuspids and part of his upper jaw. The jawbone showed signs of healing, suggesting that the man lived for a significant amount of time after being injured, the researchers wrote in the study.

Archaeologists had previously identified only a few cases of trauma caused by sharp weapons or projectiles in Middle Paleolithic skeletons. Although these injuries could have resulted from hunting accidents, the researchers wrote, they have generally been interpreted as evidence of interpersonal violence.

The cut mark on the jaw of Qafzeh 25 was found on the left side of his face, lending further support to the idea that the injury was not an accident.

A close-up of the left side of the lower jaw, showing a cut mark near a bicuspid. (Image credit: Ana Pantoja et al.) It's not clear what kind of tool made the cut mark, but stone tools found at Qafzeh included flint scrapers and sharp points that could have been fashioned into spear tips.

"Forensic studies of modern human populations have reported that craniofacial injuries resulting from blows are more frequently observed on the left side of the skull, a distribution commonly attributed to the predominance of right-handed assailants in face-to-face confrontations," the researchers wrote.

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If the researchers' interpretation of the cut mark is correct, it "would represent the earliest documented case of sharp force trauma in the archaeological record," they wrote.

Qafzeh cave is already well known within archaeology for its clear evidence that early humans buried their dead. The new discovery confirms that the earliest human groups left Africa with a complex culture.

"These results provide new data to the debate on the origin of complex behaviors such as interpersonal violence, the care of injured or sick individuals and funeral practices," study first author Ana Pantoja Pérez , a paleoanthropologist at Spain's National Research Center for Human Evolution, said in a statement .

See how much you know about early humans with our human evolution quiz!

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Buffalo reverses Blu-ray exit decision after securing more components

Customers face 33-51% price hikes for remaining portable drive stock

Manufacturing will eventually cease once current component supply runs out

Japanese firm Buffalo has reversed its decision to stop selling Blu-ray drives (via PC Watch ), announcing it will continue selling several portable models after securing additional supply of components that were previously unavailable.

This comes after an earlier February 2026 announcement that it would suspend the sale of Blu-ray drives in July 2026 due to component shortages – not a lack of demand.

However, customers are set to pay a premium for Buffalo’s renewed sales due to ongoing global semiconductor shortages, rising material costs and higher overall manufacturing costs.

Limited supply leads to hefty price hikes

For example, the BRXL-PTV6U3 model bundled with writing software sees the biggest increase of 51%, from ¥16,940 ($104) to ¥25,630 ($158). Buffalo’s BRXL-PT6U3 model also sees a 44% price hike, and the BRXL-PTWOU3 increases in cost by 33%.

Additionally, even though the company continues to sell Blu-ray drives at a higher cost to maintain supply for customer demand, production will only continue while newly sourced components last, implying that Buffalo itself is facing major supply struggles.

No final end date has been shared due to the unpredictability of production volumes, shipping volumes and retail inventory levels, but once the parts are no longer available, manufacturing will stop and sales will likely end permanently.

More broadly, it marks ongoing challenges in the industry, with Pioneer confirming it would be withdrawing from the optical disc drive business in 2025. LG also stopped manufacturing new drives, and Sony shipped its final consumer Blu-ray recorders in Japan implying a relatively strong market as other regions dwindled.

Some manufacturers are still clinging on

However, earlier this year Verbatim Japan and I-O Data publicly committed to continuing Blu-ray drive development (via Tom’s Hardware ) even after major players exited, arguing that demand remains strong for customers who need long-term offline storage, like photographers and videographers, governments, businesses and archives.

“We have once again recognized that the need to ‘record data I want to keep onto a disc I have on hand [sic]’ continues to genuinely exist,” the two companies said in a joint statement.

However, optical storage does face competition from the generally pricier, but far more convenient rival that is cloud storage. Local storage via SSDs and HDDs is also often favored by many.

Ultimately, despite continued demand for some markets in Japan, likely driven by anime consumption and a relatively strong but declining movie rental business, the Blu-ray market is no longer big enough to guarantee a stable supply of components. With news that Buffalo, too, could soon exit the market after a second wind, it could mark the end of the Blu-ray era.