Leapmotor T03 first drive | Value fully-electric city car

Leapmotor has joined Dacia in offering a sub-£20,000 fully-electric car, and is offering buyers a city car packed with technology. While there are obviously compromises drivers have to make at this price point, the T03 should win buyers on its equipment level alone.

Overview

Until last year, a sub-£20,000 fully-electric car – Citroen Ami aside, which is technically a quadricycle – seemed like a fairly unrealistic prospect.

Then came the Dacia Spring, with an entry P11D price of £14,999, and – just like busses in the familiar saying – along comes a second one in the Leapmotor T03 city car, which has a P11D price of £15,940.

This Chinese brand may be unfamiliar to many, but it has come to Europe as part of Leapmotor International, which is a 51:49 joint venture led by Stellantis.

This gives it access to a ready-made infrastructure, dealers network, aftersales facilities and access to swift and reliable parts supply.

Leapmotor officially launched in the UK in March, and the T03 was one of two launch models; the other was the fully-electric C10 SUV.

At the time, managing director Damien Dally told Fleet News there had been a surprisingly strong level of interest from fleets in the T03.

Comfort and practicality

The amount of space inside the T03 is obviously restricted by its city car footprint – it is just 3,620mm long and 1,652mm wide – but at 1,577mm it is tall for its class, with its height aiding the feeling of space inside the cabin significantly.

Although the front seat occupants are cosy width-wise, there remains ample shoulder room, while in the back two six-footers will be fine – it is a four-seater only, so anyone needed to sit three people in the back should look elsewhere.

Rear legroom is pretty generous and, overall, the amount of space on offer is impressive considering the size of the car.

Once inside, occupants will find a pretty basic cabin by modern standards, with a mixture of cloth and hard plastic interior trims, but all of this is perfectly acceptable when set against the context of its £15,940 P11d price tag.

There isn’t much in the way of design flourishes in the cabin, with just a cupholder and smartphone storage as the centre console, although it does have a 10.1-inch centrally-mounted infotainment system.

At 210 litres boot space is average for the class, but the boot opening is fairly narrow and there is a fairly big drop down from the lip to the floor to further hinder practicality.

The rear seats do fold down, however, to create a larger cargo area (Leapmotor has not provided details of the larger capacity), but there is a noticeable step between the boot floor and the back of the seats when you do this.

Safety and technology

The T03 has not yet been tested by Euro NCAP, but the model has 10 ADAS (advanced driver assistance system) technologies, including lane departure warning, lane keeping assistance, adaptive cruise control, intelligent speed assistance, driver drowsiness warning and blind spot detection.

The range offering is simple: just one trim level is available, with the only choice available to customers is the colour.

Thankfully, it has plenty of standard equipment. This includes rear camera with parking sensors, automatic air conditioning, heated and electrically-adjustable wing mirrors, full panoramic roof with electric sunshade, satellite navigation, and eight-inch LCD instrument cluster, and all-round electric windows.

The infotainment system, operated by the already-mentioned 10.1-inch touchscreen, has a crisp display but can be fiddly to operate as the icons are small and the user experience is not as intuitive as often found.

This is unfortunate as it operates just about everything, including the climate controls. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are not yet supported.

Driveability and range

There is usually a certain charm to driving city cars as their light weight, small size and usually-thin-tyres make them enjoyable to drive despite their low power outputs.

The T03 replicates this pretty well. Its electric motor produces 95PS and 158Nm of torque to offset its kerbweight of 1.2 tonnes, to provide a 0-62mph time of 12 seconds.

This is enough to provide spritely performance at lower speeds and, combined with the light steering, makes it ideal to nip around urban areas in.

Refinement is decent, especially above 20mph as that is when the noise all EVs are legally required to make stops. The Leapmotor’s sound is more intrusive than most, however.

The T03 uses a 37kWh battery for a WLTP combined range of 165 miles.

An onboard 6.6kW AC charger means it can be charged from empty to full in around six hours from an appropriate charger, while it can also be charged at up to 48kWh from a DC charger.

While this means the battery can charge from 30% to 80% in 36 minutes, this does equate to just an extra 82 miles due to the charging speed.

Company car tax and running costs

Due to its low P11d price, the T03 will cost drivers as little as £8 per month as it sits in the 3% benefit-in-kind tax band.

When it comes to running costs, data from Cap HPI shows the T03 will cost 19.58p per mile over a four-year/80,000-mile cycle.