Leapmotor T03 test drive | New car reviews 2025

Make and model: Leapmotor T03
Description: Small electric hatchback
Price range: from £15,995

Leapmotor says: “The UK’s best value electric car.”

We say: In most ways, the new Leapmotor T03 impresses. It’s very well priced, you get a lot of kit for your money and it’s electric rather than petrol. But the electronic nanny systems are simply terrible.

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Introduction

Leapmotor is this week’s newest Chinese car company launching in the UK, following the likes of Omoda, Skywell, Jaecoo and others in recent months. But the thing that sets Leapmotor apart from the others is that it will be part of the global Stellantis family, standing alongside more familiar names like Vauxhall, Peugeot, Citroën and Fiat.

Even in China, Leapmotor is a very new car company. It was founded only about a decade ago, and is now starting to spread its wings into Europe through a partnership with Stellantis. The T03 is one of two models available as the brand launches in the UK, with the other one being a large SUV model called the C10. A mid-sized SUV called the B10 will join the line-up later this year.

Leapmotor will sell cars through dealers within the existing Stellantis network, so you are likely to see Leapmotor badges popping up alongside Vauxhall or Peugeot showrooms around the country. The company claims to have more than 40 dealers already on board, with about 80 expected by the end of the year.

What is it?

The Leapmotor T03 is a small four-door hatchback, classed as a ‘city car’. In other words, it’s grouped in the smallest category of cars alongside the likes of the Fiat 500 or Hyundai i10.

It’s also a major rival to the new Dacia Spring, which is the other budget brand offering a new electric city car for the price of a petrol model. This was raised multiple times during the launch event, by Leapmotor executives as well as by journalists.

Apparently, the design brief was for the T03 to look friendly, which it sort of achieves. The front end is supposed to look like the car is smiling, but from some angles it looks a bit awkward. The proportions are a bit odd, making the car look quite narrow and tall. It also makes the wheels look very small, although they’re a perfectly normal size of 15 inches.

What do you get for your money?

With many new cars, you end up with a spreadsheet of powertrains, body styles, battery sizes (for EVs) and trim levels, and a range of prices that sees the top-spec cars running to almost double the price of the entry-level models. Leapmotor has made things very simple by offering one model. There’s only one motor, one battery, one trim level and one body style. The T03 costs £15,995 and the only extra-cost option is metallic paint, in either silver or blue, for an extra £650.

Leapmotor is pushing hard for the T03 to be recognised as a ‘value’ offering rather than a ‘budget’ one, but then so do Aldi and Lidl. It’s unavoidable that price is the headline here, and £16K is very cheap for any kind of new car, let alone an electric car. And it’s true that there’s plenty of value on offer.

For your £16K, you’re getting a small car that’s better equipped than pretty much anything else at a similar price point, plus it has an electric motor rather than a petrol engine. You get a panoramic sunroof, rear parking sensors plus a reversing camera, 15-inch alloy wheels, adaptive cruise control, electric windows and mirrors, blind-spot detection and more.

What’s possibly more interesting is what you don’t get. Although there’s a ten-inch central display screen with built-in satnav, you don’t get DAB digital radio – it’s FM only, as far as we could find – or Apple CarPlay/Android Auto. You can connect your phone via Bluetooth like it’s 2005 all over again, but that’s not really a viable option if you have to handle your phone to answer calls or play your music, which you can’t do on the move.

If you really want to hand over more money, I’m sure your local dealer will be happy to fleece you for car mats, various kinds of insurance and service plans, overpriced car cleaning products and so on. But don’t.

Expert tips

• Only one trim and specification, which makes choosing a model pretty simple
• Four-year warranty competitive for this segment, but other Chinese brands do better

What’s the Leapmotor T03 like inside?

The cabin is certainly spacious, given the overall dimensions of the car. Two adults fit in the back seats without too much complaining and without the front passengers having to push their seats all the way forward. Headroom in the back is decent as well, so it’s a much better prospect than most city cars if you need to carry people in the back seats.

In front of the driver is an eight-inch digital screen instead of analogue gauges, with a larger ten-inch touchscreen in the centre of the dashboard. As with many screen-laden new cars, some of the fonts are too small to read easily on the move, and the manufacturer would do well to make the screen layouts simpler rather than jazzier. There are almost no physical buttons, so everything has to be done via the touchscreen. That includes adjusting the heating or air-conditioning, which is annoying.

The seats are comfy enough, at least on our fairly short drive at the UK launch event last week. The steering wheel adjusts for rake (up and down) but not reach (in and out), but most drivers are likely to find a comfortable position. Even on many cars with reach adjustment, you feel like the steering wheel can’t be pulled out far enough, but this one was fine without needing it.

Boot space, however, is smaller than we’d like. Even allowing for the fact that the T03 is a small car, the space available lags behind rivals like the Dacia Spring. You can fold the rear seat down in one piece (rather than a 60/40 split like you see in larger cars), which helps for carrying larger loads if you’re not using the back seats.

The fit and finish are better than what you’d probably expect from one of the cheapest new cars on sale. Some of the materials may not be quite as luxurious as you’d find on a BMW or Audi, but the car generally feels very well screwed together. During our – admittedly brief – drive at the launch, there were no rattles or loose bits of trim anywhere and everything felt as tight as a drum.

Expert tips

• Very spacious inside cabin for such a compact car
• Boot space not so generous
• Build quality seems very competitive for the money

What’s the Leapmotor T03 like to drive?

The first point to note is that, based on the early launch vehicles we drove last week, the driver fatigue warning system on the T03 is the most annoying and distracting system I’ve ever experienced on a new car, and patently not fit for purpose. The only car that comes close to being this bad is the Leapmotor C10 I drove immediately beforehand. More details in the Safety section below.

Thankfully, the other car systems seem to be better tuned. Despite being a short car, the T03 feels stable and well-balanced in urban driving where it’s really designed to be. Throttle response is pretty good and the car will easily keep up with the cut-and-thrust of day-to-day traffic. The steering is light and the turning circle is suitably tight, so weaving through narrow city streets should be a breeze.

We only spent a short time at higher speeds, and the T03 behaved like most small, budget cars. It’s a bit bouncy and there’s a bit of wind noise, but certainly no more of either than anything else in this class of car. The electric motor is less responsive at accelerating from 50-70mph, but then you could say the same about a small petrol engine in a Kia Picanto or Hyundai i10.

Expert tips

• Probably the most annoying and distracting anti-distraction systems of any new car, which very much detract from the driving experience
• Noise levels higher than other EVs
• Agile enough for city driving, less happy at higher speeds

How safe is the Leapmotor T03?

As of February 2025, the Leapmotor T03 has not been assessed by Euro NCAP so we can’t give you a definitive answer of how safe it is (Euro NCAP testing assesses new cars over and above minimum legal safety requirements). If and when this testing takes place, we’ll update the information and safety score here.

The T03 is kitted out with plenty of latest-generation ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems) kit, but that doesn’t mean they work as well as they should. The accident prevention systems need some serious recalibration, an issue which affected both the T03 and the larger C10 SUV we drove at the launch event.

In the case of the T03, the driver fatigue warning would beep loudly on a regular basis, requiring you to deactivate it by pushing a button on the central touchscreen. This warning would go off any time you looked down, or yawned, or coughed, or sang along to a song on the radio, or talked to your passenger. Until Leapmotor fixes the system, you’d literally have to tape over the driver-facing camera to stop it from working (and put up with a permanent warning light) so you could live with the car – which obviously defeats the purpose of having the system at all.

We also found that the adaptive cruise control tended to disengage going around bends, which is another annoyance that doesn’t tend to crop up in other cars. Again, this happened on both Leapmotor models we drove, which suggests that the engineers still have work to do in getting these safety systems working properly.

Expert tips

• The Leapmotor T03 has not yet been rated by Euro NCAP (as of February 2025)
• Anti-distraction systems are actually hugely distracting, which does not make the car safer
• Having adaptive cruise control as standard, but it disengages around minor bends where no braking is required

Leapmotor T03 economy, battery range and charging

The Leapmotor T03 has a 37kWh battery, which works out to a battery range of 165 miles, according to the official UK/EU lab test programme. That’s better than the Dacia Spring’s 140-mile range on the same test cycle.

In the real world, your results will vary. Most T03 drivers are going to be using their cars in urban environments, which is good for EVs as you push a little bit of charge back into the battery every time you lift off the accelerator or hit the brakes. So in urban driving, you may be able to exceed the 165-mile figure. In open road driving with less braking, especially on motorways at higher speeds, your mileage will reduce significantly. Our launch drive was quite short, so we didn’t get anywhere near testing the range of a full battery.

Electrical efficiency (the EV equivalent of fuel economy in a petrol or diesel car) is reasonable rather than amazing, which is disappointing for such a small car. The Dacia Spring is better here, so it will cost less to run – noticeably so if you’re charging at public chargers, less noticeable if you’re able to charge at home where the electricity is cheaper.

At public chargers, the T03 can accept a maximum charging speed of 45kW, which is better than the Dacia but not particularly quick compared to larger and more expensive EVs. We don’t have an industry-standard 10%-80% charging time available, but it should be about 40 minutes or so.

The charging port is in the nose of the car, so you’ll want to park head-first in charging bays rather than reversing in. If you’re charging at home, the T03 is short enough that your cable will probably reach the charging plug regardless of which way round you park.

Expert tips

• Official battery range of 165 miles. Around town, this is probably achievable but motorway driving will reduce this significantly.
• Battery is unsurprisingly small since this is a small car, but driving range should be plenty for its intended customer base.
• The charging port is in the nose of the car, which means parking head-first in charging bays.
• Comes standard with the usual Type-2-to-Type-2 charging cable for plugging into a dedicated charging unit, but not a Type-2-to-Type-3 cable for plugging into a standard three-point electricity plug.

Verdict

In most ways, the new Leapmotor T03 impresses. It’s very well priced, you get a lot of kit for your money and it’s electric rather than petrol, so it should cost you peanuts to run if you can charge it from home or work. There’s plenty of room in the cabin for such a small car, and the build quality appears to be perfectly decent for the money.

As of right now (February 2025), there are question marks on safety as the T03 hasn’t been tested by Euro NCAP. Ticking all the equipment boxes is no guarantee of a good score – the Dacia Spring has a terrible Euro NCAP rating so hopefully the T03 will be much better. There are other relatively minor foibles, like a boot that’s smaller than you’d hope, electrical efficiency that’s not great for such a small car, and a lack of Apple CarPlay or Android Auto to run through the central touchscreen.

But the biggest problem we have with the Leapmotor T03 right now is its terrible electronic nanny systems. Until Stellantis can get these properly sorted, you would tear your hair out living with one of these cars. Hopefully, it can be sorted via a remote update over the air very soon, or else Leapmotor dealers are going to be fending off some very angry customers.

Expert recommendations

• An electric city car that’s cheaper than most petrol city cars
• Can’t confirm safety performance until Euro NCAP conducts its tests
• Physical driving characteristics are fine, but electronic systems are terrible and need to be fixed urgently

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