Leapmotor B10 2026 review | One of the cheapest EVs you can buy

What is the Leapmotor B10?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of years, you’ll know that Chinese car manufacturers have arrived in the UK in force. Among them is Leapmotor, the maker of a tiny city car, the T03 – which one of Britain’s most affordable EVs – as well as the big C10 SUV.

Now, to fill the yawning chasm in its range between the two, it’s introduced the B10. This family SUV is sized to compete with a host of popular mid-size electric family SUVs – the Skoda Elroq, Renault Scenic, Volkswagen ID.4, Citroën ë-C5, Hyundai Kona and Kia e-Niro among them.

The key difference with the B10 is that it’s priced against much smaller SUVs, like the Ford Puma Gen-E, Peugeot e-2008, and Vauxhall Mokka Electric. That being the case, you get a lot of car for your cash – and, Leapmotor hopes, that will lend it an appeal to family buyers looking to trade up to an EV without spending too much.

Trouble is, it’s not the only one that's had this idea; compatriot manufacturers are gunning for similar territory. The Geely EX5, BYD Atto 3 and Omoda E5 have all been launched with the same aim, at the same piece of territory. The question is going to be whether the Leapmotor B10 can stand out.

How practical is it?

Boot space is important in this part of the market, and the B10 does reasonably well here. OK, the 430-litre main boot isn’t the largest (for contest, the Elroq, Kona and EX5 all offer between 465 and 470 litres), but it’s augmented by a 25-litre front boot (or ‘frunk’) located under the bonnet, which is handy because it gives you a separate location to store power cables, washer fluid, and other motoring essentials, away from the main luggage area.

The B10 is roomy inside, too. Leg room and head room are beyond generous in the back seats, and the combination of high-seat seat bases and large, wide-opening rear doors mean it’s a doddle to buckle children in.

Up front, the trend continues, with plenty of head, elbow and leg room. The storage pockets in the doors are a little on the slim side, mind you, but that’s not too much of an issue when there’s so much space for odds and ends elsewhere – for example, a huge tray between the seats, a cubby under the arm rest, and a good-sized glovebox.

What’s really appealing about the B10’s interior is the light, airy feeling it gives you. That’s a result of three factors: the standard panoramic roof, the large windows (which also help with visibility), and the light colours used on the interior fabrics and plastics.

The only downside with those pale materials is that they probably won’t be compatible with sat-on crayons, half-chewed biscuits, and all the other mucky detritus that comes with family life. Thankfully, the leather-effect upholstery should at least be easy to wipe down.

What’s it like to drive?

Leapmotor likes to keep its model ranges simple, offering just one specification, and one powertrain.

That means the only battery on offer is a 67kWh unit. That’s a gross figure, too – Leapmotor doesn’t release a net figure, which is to say the total usable battery capacity once the margins engineered in to help preserve its life are taken into account – but it’ll likely be 2-3kWh less than that.

As a result, the official WLTP range is just 270 miles. Now, that’s about on a par with a Skoda Elroq 60 – but the difference is that Skoda also offers a larger battery for buyers who need greater ranges, something you can’t get in the B10.

Peak charging speeds on a DC charger are rated at 168kW, but that doesn’t tell the whole story; average charging power across the curve is around the 110kW mark, and that means it’ll take 26 minutes to get from 10 to 80 per cent. In that time, you’ll gain around 152 miles of extra range.

All of these figures are, once again, on a par with the Elroq 60, and more rapid than a Hyundai Kona – but it’s a pity there’s no faster charging option, which might help mitigate the fact the only battery on offer is quite small.

At least the B10 is reasonably brisk. You get a 212bhp electric motor, and it feels faster off the line than its stated 0-62mph time of eight seconds would suggest. Power does seem to tail off quite rapidly at higher speeds, but there’s still enough get-up-and-go to keep up with motorway traffic.

The steering feels odd at first, with a really sharp response when you first turn the wheel that means the B10 can feel slightly nervous. Turn the wheel further, and the steering’s reactions become less dramatic, which means you find yourself having to recalibrate your brain to that darty response off the dead-ahead. But once you’ve done so, it isn’t an issue, and you find that the B10 is actually quite capable on a back road, with plenty of grip and a nose that’s keen to follow your instructions to turn in. You won't relish driving it, and there’s a little more body lean than we’d like, but given this is a heavy family SUV, it does the job it needs to.

More salient is how comfortably the B10 rides bumps, and here it does pretty well – for the most part. At lower speeds, the suspension can occasionally be caught out by sharper-edged bumps, which send a nasty thump through the whole body. But for the most part, and especially at speed, there’s a rather lovely, pillowy feel to the B10’s ride quality – it isn’t perfect, but it does feel soft without resorting to wallowiness.

Technology, equipment & infotainment

As with most new Chinese cars, the B10’s control interface is dominated by the huge, 14.6-inch touchscreen in the middle of the dashboard. The graphics are modern and pleasant to look at, but because so many of the car’s functions have been crammed in here, it can be hard to find the one you want.

This compounds one of the B10’s biggest failings, which is that some of the essential day-to-day functions you’d expect to find on a switch are instead hidden away in an on-screen menu – for example, the lights. This means finding your way to the right menu to turn on the dipped beams, instead of simply turning a switch.

Leapmotor says the idea here is that you can leave the lights on automatic, and activate them using voice control if you need them. But automatic lights don’t always work in fog or rain – and the voice control assistant sometimes struggles to understand what you’re asking it to do. A simple switch would be so much less fiddly, and give you the certainty of knowing your lights are on and you can be easily seen in heavy weather.

Control for the heating and ventilation is also achieved through the touchscreen. The news is slightly better here, because Leapmotor has an always-on bar across the bottom of the screen that allows you to turn the temperature up and down without having to go into the menus. Trouble is, this bar is quite small, and the on-screen icons are fiddly, so you have to spend time looking away from the road to make sure you’re pressing them correctly.

There’s a lot here, in short, that would be solved with just a few extra switches. And it’s a shame there aren’t more, because the B10’s interior is really rather lovely otherwise, with lots of neat design touches, ambient lighting that lets you choose from 64 different colours, and materials that feel at least as high-quality as those in Korean rivals.

You get a lot of toys thrown in for your money, too. There’s only one specification, and it’s fully loaded, with electrically adjustable, heated and ventilated front seats, a panoramic glass roof, climate control, a heat pump, adaptive cruise control, 18-inch alloy wheels, a 360-degree parking camera system, vehicle-to-load charging (more on which in ‘Three Things To Know’) and wireless phone charging, all as standard.

The only option you can choose is the paint colour – though even then, the standard ‘Starry Night Blue’ you get for free is a pleasing shade you may not want to change.

Leapmotor B10 running costs

In the pricing and specification guide provided on its website, Leapmotor claims the B10 will achieve an energy efficiency of 5.7mi/kWh. That’s a remarkable figure if it’s right – for context, most EVs of its type normally get around 4.0mi/kWh, and 4.5mi/kWh would be considered impressive.

It’s hard to verify that figure properly as Leapmotor doesn’t provide net battery capacity figures. But based on an educated estimate, and the car’s range, we reckon it should actually be around the 4.0mi/kWh mark, perhaps slightly less in winter. In other words, perfectly respectable given the type of car that it is – but a little way off the claimed figures.

What’s for certain is that the list price makes the Leapmotor B10 look extraordinarily good value. To get a Skoda Elroq 60 to a specification even approaching that of the B10 would set you back around £5,000 more – and you still wouldn’t get some of the choice features that come as standard with the Leapmotor. A Hyundai Kona Electric Ultimate, by contrast, does come with all the same toys – and more besides – but it’ll set you back around £8,000 more to buy.

Tax costs are the same on all EVs with a list price of less than £40,000 are all the same, so the B10 shouldn’t cost you any more or less to tax than any of its rivals – which is to say, the current minimum rate in the first year, and the standard flat rate from then on.

Leapmotor B10 reliability

We’d love to be able to tell you how reliable the Leapmotor B10 will be. Honestly, we would. Trouble is, we simply can’t.

That’s not to say that it won’t be dependable – it’s just that we have absolutely no data to say, one way or the other. Leapmotor’s cars haven’t been on sale in this country long enough for us to judge how reliable they'll be, they haven’t been featured in any UK reliability surveys, and we can’t even judge reliability based on shared mechanicals, because nothing else uses the same bits under the skin. So really, buying one will be a bit of a Leap(motor) into the unknown. (Sorry.)

What we can tell you is that Leapmotor puts a four-year, 60,000-mile warranty on its cars. That’s better than the norm – a three-year, 60,000-mile warranty is the bare minimum you’d expect these days, and it’s what you’d get with a Skoda Elroq.

But it’s also not as good as the warranties offered by Citroën, Kia, Hyundai, and a whole heap of others besides. So far, there’s no extended warranty offering, either.