Leapmotor T03 review: affordable electric city car arrives in Ireland under €20,000

Chinese-built electric supermini backed by Stellantis offers strong value, solid range and surprising quality for budget-conscious Irish drivers

Leapmotor T03 review: a budget electric car under €20,000 with strong range, high spec and growing presence in Ireland’s EV market.

LEAPMOTOR T03
Rating	★★★★☆
Price	€18,950
Engine	a 37.3kWh battery pack with 93bhp
Range	claimed range is 265km but real world is around 185km
The Spec	Absolutely mind-boggling
Verdict	A few flaws, but not many

IT IS always a little worrying, I have found, for a new marque to be locked into the miasma of public ignorance.

When you get a car from such a brand, and are constantly bombarded from anyone you meet with one question — “what the hell are you driving?” — it is generally something that should concern the distributor importing vehicles with a new nameplate.

“A Leapmotor, you say? What in god’s name is that?”

This is where the patience of Job is required, because these are questions you will have been asked a million times during the course of your week with said Leapmotor.

So, for the benefit of a slightly wider audience, Leapmotor is yet another brand to emerge from China in the recent past, but it is one with a slight twist to it.

On the basis of the old business adage “if you can’t beat them, buy into them”, Stellantis secured a 20% stake in Zhejaing Motor Technology Co Ltd just three years ago and, in 2024, started to sell Leapmotor vehicles across Europe.

The Stellantis representative in Ireland — the Gowan Group — started marketing them here last year, and is now getting into their stride in that regard with the continuing appointment of dealers around the country.

That Leapmotor was only founded in 2015, and sold its first vehicles in 2019, is yet another extraordinary example of the rise of the Chinese auto industry. That it produced 596,555 vehicles last year is even more astounding.

With Stellantis owning a share of the action and anxious to make a few bob from its hefty investment, you can expect to see and hear a lot more about the marque in the coming months. However, it is — as illustrated — an uphill climb to get the nameplate established and talked about.

One way of doing so, of course, is to get a few journalists into them and write about them. This is often a double-edged sword — and particularly so if said journalists don’t particularly like the product or, worse, get annoyed by the persistent questioning they face about it.

The Leapmotor T03 is not the fastest car on the road, but it does have very secure handling characteristics and decent Continental tyres.

When one of your prime products is a bargain basement EV that looks like a Tonka Toy, causing much mirth among the masses, the struggle for acceptance becomes vertiginous.

The Leapmotor T03 — for that is our tester this week — is indeed a funny looking thing. It is something of a cross between a Fiat Bambino and the bumper cars you see at the merries. That in itself was the cause of much mirth among those keeping a keen eye on what’s in the driveway Chez Colley on a weekly basis.

What shocked them into near catatonia, however, was that it was a fully-fledged EV — albeit with a relatively limited range — which comes as standard with a spec. A list that would cause a Rolls-Royce to blanche and sells for just shy of €19,000.

Now, Stellantis has a lot in play here — especially so as it reported losses last year of a staggering €22.3bn, primarily due to EV write downs and strategic restructuring.

The conglomerate bet big on EVs. However, the early collapse in EV sales means most of the company’s plans turned to dust.

A revival in the EV market suggests that their investments were not misplaced and will turn around.

But for all the soundness of their forward planning, there are still holes in their product line-up that need filling, and fresh thinking in evolutionary battery design and construction is always welcome.

This is where Leapmotor comes into the picture. With the BYD brand having done a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to establishing the Chinese industry in foreign markets, getting Leapmotor up and running across Europe is not as daunting a prospect as it might have been.

The company has something in the region of 10 differing models in production right now, some of which will never be seen in Europe. But what will get here are models such as the T03 supermini, the B10 compact SUV, and the C10 mid-sized SUV.

While the two SUVs will be crucial to cracking the sales market, the T03 is perhaps even more important — particularly so for Stellantis, which has had a deal of trouble in making an affordable small electric urban runaround. Now they have a ready-made one, and it will be massive for both organisations — not to mention the new dealer network.

Obviously, with a car this cheap, the first thing that comes to mind is the worrying thought that the maker has had to cut a lot of corners to achieve that price. We saw it with the fellow bargain basement contender, the Dacia Spring, the first proper EV with a sub-€20,000 price: It seriously looks like a cheap car. Somewhat contentious exterior appearances aside, the T03, does not look or feel cheap. It has a full electric panoramic sunroof, four doors with electric windows and door mirrors, cruise control, a 10.1” infotainment screen, an 8” digital instrumentation cluster and steering wheel buttons to control many of the car’s functions.

The Leapmotor T03 is not the fastest car on the road, but it does have very secure handling characteristics and decent Continental tyres.

There is only one specification option. Sure, there are loads of scratchy black plastics inside, but everything appears well-screwed together, and an initial appraisal suggests build quality is of a high order.

There’s plenty of room for the front-seat passengers, but it is tight in the back, and adults will not find being back there for extended periods a comfortable experience. The boot is relatively small.

The décor is largely plain, but the textured pad across the centre of the dash is nice and functional.

While the upholstery is redolent of any Japanese car from the 1990s, it looked hard-wearing. The seats were comfortable enough too.

Power comes from an electric motor mounted on the front axle, and is allied to a 37.3kWh battery pack. Output is 93bhp , and that translates into a 0-100km/h time of 12.7 seconds and a top speed of 128km/h.

It is not the fastest car on the road, but it does have very secure handling characteristics and decent continental tyres (unlike the LingLongs on the Spring); it doesn’t have any real vices in this department, even if there is the expected trace of understeer.

The steering is relatively sharp.

The claimed range is 265km and, in the real world, this translates into a true figure of around 185km, which is not bad for the price. Indeed, with an indicated range of 200km leaving my West Cork lair, I made the 125km trip to Cork City and had 95km still available when I got there. That’s better than a lot of bigger EVs.

The downsides include a sub-20km/h noise, and it is annoying. So too is the constant bonging of speed, lane change, and driver attention warnings, but these can be turned off, even if you have to do it every time you sit in. Wind noise at motorway speeds is also notable.

As a first stab at the sector from Leapmotor, this is a pretty stunning effort; with most Chinese cars, you find their initial efforts were good and promised better in future. With this, it seems like they got it right the first time.

A city car undoubtedly which is well able to act outside its urban realm, this is a fantastic little car. Although its origins might be alien to a lot of buyers right now, that will not be the case in the very near future.