REVIEW | Leapmotor T03 - Hard to Ignore

19 Feb

A new player in the small EV market

Small EVs are a tough sell. The vast majority of the electric cars on offer tend to be quite expensive, don’t offer the sort of range you might consider useful, and come with compromises that don’t necessarily match their price tags. The cheapest on the market is currently the Dacia Spring - a small, very honest wee thing - but now, thanks to Leapmotor, it has a competitor that it should probably be worried about.

Who is Leapmotor?

Leapmotor hails from China, though it’s teamed up with Stellantis to sell (and provide parts for) cars all over Europe. The name of the game is ‘value,’ which is a marketing friendly way of saying ‘we’re gonna sell ‘em cheap.’ However, Leapmotor does give you lots and lots of stuff in the deal, and, on paper at least, decent range.

Power, range and price

The T03 is the smallest car in the line up and it looks (as noted by far brighter people than me) like one of the pigs from Angry Birds - cute in a confidently ugly sort of way. It comes with a 37kWh battery feeding a 95hp motor that sends power to the front wheels. Leapmotor says it’ll do 165 miles (WLTP combined) on a charge, giving a potential efficiency of 4.5 miles per kilowatt hour. There’s one spec on offer to keep things simple (and good value, of course), and just about everything you could possibly want is included. While value may well be the aim of the game, you can’t accuse Leapmotor of being miserly - because for £15,995 you get a 10-inch touch screen, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, a generous suite of ADAS features, a 8-inch digital instrument display, and a surprising amount of space.

At this point, plenty of people will raise an eyebrow and say ‘well, the Dacia Spring might be in trouble…’ To an extent, they’d be right to do so. The Spring’s battery isn’t as chunky, its doors don’t close with as satisfying a ‘thunk,’ and it doesn’t seem as well packaged as the new boy. Thanks to being a Stellantis product (of sorts) you needn’t worry about getting hold of parts if something goes pop as there’s a healthy stock and distribution system in place, which means an argument that it’ll be harder to fix than a more established player sort of goes out the window. It seems like the little Leapmotor is on to a winner.

Speed and braking

If you’re waiting for a two-foot challenge to its integrity, you’ll be waiting a while. It’s not the quickest car in the world, sure, but it feels decently brisk for a city car the size of a bag of Quavers. Gentle pressure on the throttle will lob you down the road a decent lick. It’s quiet in the cabin at almost any speed - though the sub-20mph ‘don’t get run over by this EV’ warning noise thing sounds a little like the car is suffering a serious malady. It’s pretty efficient though - it managed 3.6 miles per kWh, which, on a grotty winter’s day, is impressive.

Its brakes can feel a touch grabby, and the steering is oddly springy but not so much you’ll take umbrage to either. In fact, you’ll end up with the same thought rolling through your head: “It’s a £16k car.”

T03 interior and tech

Leapmotor being a ‘value’ proposition plays heavily into its favour here, because the T03 isn’t a perfect car by any means. The infotainment screen does plenty of things, but it’s not super hi-res. The UI itself isn’t all that user friendly, requiring you to prod through menus to get to what you want to see. The ADAS can be intrusive, and a pain to switch off thanks to the menus. Occasionally, as you’re fooling around with menus, some less than stellar translations pop up accompanied by Chinese text, which can take you out of the moment a bit.

The boot is a super small 210 litres, which is enough for a small shop, or a few squishy bags, but isn’t going to be much use in a house move. The inbuilt sound system is, to be blunt, awful - the sat nav sounded like it was issuing instructions through a sock - and no matter which sliders you fiddle with there’s no way Absolute 80s is going to sound any good pumping out of its tiny, tinny speakers.

The interior is a sea of plastic, and not all of it is very nice. Key touch points are decent (there are some very Mercedes-esque stalks in there), enough, but you won’t be blown away. As a place to be, it’s function over form. The trim is there to ensure you don’t fall out of the car, or cut yourself on a sharp bit of metal, it’s not there to be pretty.

Tempting at its price

If that sounds like I’m damning it, I sort of am, but also not. At the end of the day it’s a £16,000 car. You can have a new, efficient, feature-laden set of wheels for a good chunk less than £20,000, and with it you get a four year warranty, the backing of a major dealer network, and confidence that if anything goes wrong it’ll be easily fixed. If it was a few thousand more expensive, you might struggle to overlook some things, but as it stands, the package is tempting. A distance cruiser is not, but as something to bimble around town in… for £16k it’s hard to ignore.

words: Alex Goy
pictures: Leapmotor - Stellantis

Alex Goy

Alex Goy is a journalist, scriptwriter, and presenter. He's been covering fast, silly, plush, and shiny cars for fifteen years, and is increasingly concerned when he spots something he's driven in a museum (it's happened more than once). He's covered cars for Top Gear, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, Autocar, Carfection, CNET, GQ, Motor1, Road and Track, and plenty more besides. You're likely to find him with a cup of tea in hand opining about the brilliance of British sports cars, or the Dacia Duster. And the odd Porsche.