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Nascent Chinese electric car brand arrives in Europe with tiny electric city car

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We’ve lost count of the number of Chinese brands that are coming to the UK, invariably planning to offer us the novelty of electric cars that look like they were styled by AI and named as imaginatively as your average photocopier.

The Leapmotor T03 appears to perfectly fit the stereotype – except it has one very important difference to its compatriots.

You see, Leapmotors sold outside of China – starting with the T03 baby hatchback tested here and the big C10 family SUV – are actually sold by Leapmotor International, a joint venture owned 49:51 by the nascent Chinese company and Stellantis, the multinational giant that runs 14 brands from France, Italy, Germany, Britain and the US.

The benefit of this, Leapmotor International CEO Tianshu Xin told us, is twofold: the brand can bypass the expensive set-up phase by simply adding its range to existing Stellantis showrooms across the nation; and potential customers will be reassured by familiarity and “360deg of support during the entire experience, from the selection of the vehicle to financing solutions and post-sales assistance services”. 

To say that Leapmotor – which was formed in Hangzhou a mere eight years ago by Zhu Jiangming, an electrical engineer with no prior automotive experience – is being ambitious about its growth abroad would be an understatement.

It’s launching in Europe (including the UK), India, South-East Asia, Oceania and South America within the space of a year and expects to sell 250,000 cars this year – almost double its 2023 total – and 500,000 in 2030.

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It has defined its key brand values as affordability (it claims the T03 is the car that finally gives A- and B-segment buyers access to electric power, although the Dacia Spring will have something to say about that) and cutting-edge technology that takes the hassle out of your daily life.

It certainly is one of the cheapest electric cars on sale at a mere £16k: that Leapmotor makes the majority of its parts in-house, hasn’t designed in superfluities and is harnessing Stellantis economies of scale apparently help the price, as does making the car on the old Fiat 500 line in Poland, not in China, and therefore avoiding both shipping costs and a 20% EU import tariff.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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DESIGN & STYLING

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At just 3620mm long (2400mm of that in the wheelbase), 1577mm wide and 1652mm tall, the T03 is shaped like a notably narrower and taller Kia Picanto – or indeed the Dacia Spring, the car that just pips it to the title of cheapest electric car on the UK market.

It may give the T03 a bit of an unappealing shape, but such tallness means that it can comfortably accommodate four 6ft-tall adults with head and leg room to spare – something that’s rare for any small car, let alone one with a battery pack integrated into its floor, and it’s slightly better in this regard than its rival from Romania (well, actually China, confusingly).

Kia recently decided to make the Picanto look very angry indeed, like all the big BMWs and Audis that will bully it on the motorway, but the effect is rather like one of those ridiculous little rat dogs squeaking through snarled teeth at an unmoved Dobermann.

The approachably cutesy Fiat 500 shows how it should be done in this class, and indeed Leapmotor decided to give the T03 a “fun” design with a “smiling face” to appeal to a “youthful mindset”.

It mostly has succeeded, although there’s still a whiff of the lead-acid microcar from Alibaba about it. 

The T03 may look tinny, and it has yet to be tested for safety for Euro NCAP, but Leapmotor highlights that 68% of its body is made of high-strength steel, it features “energy-absorbing boxes” and there are six airbags fitted.

Alloy wheels (15in) are standard, as are LED tail-lights and daytime-running lights, but not LED headlights. Whatever: what we’re really sad to be missing out on is the baby pink paint option.

INTERIOR

T03 interior

As standard, the T03 has an 8.0in digital instrument display, a multifunction steering wheel and a 10in infotainment touchscreen with sat-nav and a DAB radio (but no Apple CarPlay or Android Auto at this stage, unfortunately).

It looks fine and is relatively easy to work out, but there is one big annoyance and one enormous annoyance with it.

The first is that the climate controls are on the touchscreen, rather than physical buttons, so you have to avert your attention from the road for far too long to change anything.

The second occurs when you want to turn off the ADAS, which you probably will, despite Leapmotor being proud to have fitted them all to such an affordable car, because having the steering randomly tugged from your control is always a horrible and unnerving feeling. To switch the ADAS off, you not only have to go into a touchscreen menu to deactivate them but you also have to actually park the car first – a first in my experience, and an extremely unwelcome one.

Elsewhere inside, what isn’t covered in cloth (the seats and parts of the door cards) is made from hard, dark plastic. Usually this would come in for criticism, but that doesn’t seem fair when this car is so affordable in comparative terms, and how often do you sit and caress your car’s dashboard?

Even if you did, you wouldn’t find any truly unpleasant textures or rough edges. In the case of the front passenger’s grab handle, you would even find some smooth gloss plastic.

As mentioned, the interior is unusually spacious for a small car. At 5ft 9in, this tester didn’t even have cause to think about space, and a group of over-6ft journalists from other publications reported that they’d ridden together with no elbow-clashing or head-rubbing. 

There’s an Isofix mounting for a child seat if you need it too, the T03 being a ‘proper’ car.

The boot is much less impressive, mind you: while it’s deep, its aperture is unusually narrow, and the mere 210-litre capacity is partly taken up by the charging cables. I got a carry-on suitcase and a rucksack in there on top of them, but there wasn’t room for much more.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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Whereas the Dacia Spring comes in two distinct forms, the only option you can pick on the T03 is the paint colour.

Thankfully, it’s the version you’d want, if there were a choice. Whereas the Spring gets 44bhp (for a tedious 0-62mph time of 19.1sec) or 64bhp (13.7sec) from a single front-mounted electric motor, the T03 gets 94bhp (12.7sec) from its equivalent. 

There are three powertrain modes. Eco makes the T03 feel weedy, but Standard doesn’t.

Therein the car will race away from a standstill in a way that no old petrol-engined equivalent could ever have hoped to match, it didn’t complain about scaling the incredibly steep hills of my Italian test route, and I didn’t attract any ire when going for a third-lane overtake on the autostrada. Sport serves only to enhance the skinny tyres’ propensity for squealing. 

We often talk about how EVs are silent or near-silent, but this is true of the T03 only above about 18mph.

Below that, the motor whines pretty loudly and unpleasantly, particularly during regenerative braking. Imagine a digital recreation of the wind howling outside your bedroom window on a stormy night and you’d be almost there. 

The braking itself, by the way, gives no cause for complaint. While the pedal doesn’t exactly bite, there’s no unsettling sensation of regen switching over to or being blending with friction braking.

RIDE & HANDLING

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It seems a bit odd to me that Leapmotor is using words like ‘agile’ and ‘sporty’ to sell this car. Yes, it’s agile, but in the sense that it’s ideal for squeezing through the Italian villages of our test route, not in the sense that you should go flinging it around the hairpins of the roads that connect them.

Not unless you want to suddenly find yourself understeering headlong towards grandad Giuseppe’s Fiat Panda 4x4. 

So just forget all that and simply enjoy the nippiness, the tight turning circle and the fact that the wheels-right-out-at-the-corners stance of the car gives you utmost confidence in its dimensions when judging tight situations.

Like the powertrain, the steering has three modes: Comfort, Standard and Sport. These adjust the weight of the rack from absurdly light (I can’t remember ever feeling such little resistance) to unremarkable and then a bit meaty. It’s just a matter of personal preference which one you’d use.

The ride quality is a curiously mixed bag. It feels neither too firm nor too soft and rides over ruined asphalt in a surprisingly nonchalant way.

Yet on a few sections of faster road that looked perfectly smooth, there was a subtle but obvious bouncing going on.

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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While the Dacia Spring offers a battery capacity of 26.8kWh, giving it a mere 140-mile range and a maximum charging rate of just 30kW, the T03 has a 37.3kWh battery that gives it a 165-mile range and can be charged at 45kW (still pretty slow, but then there’s not much of it to fill).

Furthermore, Leapmotor points out that its official urban range – more relevant to the use case of your average T03 considerer – is 245 miles. We have no reason to doubt that it couldn’t live up to either official figure if driven with economy in mind.

Efficiency is officially 3.8mpkWh, and that roughly tallies with our experience, which isn’t great in the wider context, nor compared with the 4.6mpkWh of the Spring.

Leapmotor has priced this car at just under £16,000, which puts it pretty much level with its Romanian rival when you consider the performance differential and their standard kit. 

Your local Leapmotor dealer may well be familiar to you from other Stellantis brands, which is a bonus, and means there’s nationwide coverage. The car’s warranty is three years, while the separate battery warranty is eight years or 100,000 miles.

VERDICT

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It’s incredibly tough to attract British buyers to a new brand, but Leapmotor has recognised this, and its decision to get into bed with Stellantis should really help it in this regard. 

As for the T03 itself, it’s not the terrifying, poorly made, old-tech microcar that some might fear when seeing the unfamiliar name, the word ‘Chinese’ and the unconventional styling.

Chinese cars aren’t inferior to their European rivals any more; in fact, in some ways, they’re superior. Certainly this one is in terms of value for money, so long as you keep your expectations reasonable where material feel and dynamic characteristics are concerned.

The truly affordable small car format needs both saving and electrifying, and the Dacia Spring no longer stands alone as its best hope.