Leapmotor T03 (2024 - ) Electric review

Cost of entry is often raised as one of the biggest barriers to swapping from an internal combustion car to an electric one, but the industry is responding with a new generation of more accessible options. Taking that to extremes the T03 is one of the smallest and most affordable yet, and priced on a par with more conventional petrol powered city cars. Which is significant, even if it can’t match them for quality or style. Running costs are definitely on its side, though, the small battery meaning affordable charging costs even if you can’t plug in at home and have to depend on public charging instead. While the incentives last cheaper VED/road tax and exemption from London Congestion charge (at least until the end of December 2025) will also be very appealing for cost-conscious drivers.

Leapmotor is another new name for British drivers, and even by the standards of the Chinese car industry is a very young company. Which does make it something of an unknown quantity. The selling point over other new brands is the partnership with Stellantis, and existing support network of dealerships, workshops and parts supply that brings. We’ll have to wait and see on reliability but you can take a bit of confidence from the fact the T03 has this all this to fall back on should anything go wrong.

Like many of its type the T03 simultaneously impresses for the range of safety systems it includes and frustrates in the way they actually operate. Camera-based driver monitoring systems are now a regulatory requirement but the T03’s is over-sensitive to the point of near comedy, complaining the driver was distracted and they should remove their hat when, in fact, they were fully focused and, indeed, hatless. Steering interventions from the automatic lane-keeping were clumsy and heavy-handed enough to have us weaving all over the place as well, which was alarming at times. At least it was relatively easy to disable the constant (and often wrong) speed limit alerts with a single swipe on the screen. More broadly the expense of needing to have these systems is one of the reasons other manufacturers have all but given up building small cars and, well intentioned or not, you sometimes wonder if they do more harm than good, at least in terms of the constant distraction they create.

We wouldn’t criticise the T03 for being small, on the basis that’s kind of the point and what makes it so good for nipping about town. And while it may be short and narrow, it’s also quite tall, this and the standard panoramic roof making it feel more spacious than you might expect even if driver and front seat passenger may find themselves rubbing shoulders. Seating in the back is for two, and you may have to negotiate with those up front on legroom but it’s viable for four adults over short journeys and the boot is surprisingly deep, so there’s plenty of room for the shopping. Ride quality is a little bouncy at times, and the suspension struggled with rapid-fire bumps on the Italian roads we drove it on. The steering is also somewhat vague, and demands a fair bit of arm twirling. But on the basis you gets what you pay for and it’s a generally easy car to drive we’ll forgive it a few rough edges.

Even cheap city cars like this come with plenty of tech these days, the T03 having both digital instruments and a large screen in the middle through which you operate navigation, entertainment, phone, ventilation and pretty much everything else. Like many cars coming out of China the screen interface is somewhat fiddly and difficult to use on the move (expect another telling off from the driver distraction system when you try) and, while you can connect a phone on Bluetooth, there isn’t CarPlay or Android Auto, which adds to the frustration. Beyond that equipment is decent for the price, including power windows and mirrors, a reversing camera and built-in connectivity to permit over the air updates to the car’s systems. There’s only one trim level, your choice being down to colour and not much else.

The T03 is clearly built with urban driving in mind and our test route didn’t take us beyond city limits or onto faster roads like motorways or dual carriageways. 95 horsepower is more than you get in a Dacia Spring so it shouldn’t be too much out of its depth here, and in that electric car way acceleration is smooth and silent but for an artificial hum to offer a sense of how hard you’re pressing the accelerator. Even if this didn’t always align. There are three driver modes, though not a whole lot of difference between them and it’s a fiddle to find them via the touch-screen menus. So, you’ll probably not be swapping between them anyway. A relatively small battery helps keep weight down and means charging stops shouldn’t take too long even if the rates are on the slow side. An officially quoted range of 165 miles should be fine for the kind of driving most T03 owners will be doing, the efficiency we saw on our mainly urban test drive suggesting it’s more than capable of achieving that, at least at town speeds.