2026 Leapmotor C10 review | A large family SUV for the price of a small one

What is the Leapmotor C10?

Let’s start with what on earth Leapmotor is, before we get onto the Leapmotor C10. Leapmotor is a Chinese tech brand that was started in 2015, and has sold hundreds of thousands of cars in China. It’s now operating in the UK and Europe, launching with the Leapmotor T03 budget electric vehicle, and this, the C10, which is a big, 4.74-metre long family SUV that can be had either as a pure electric car, or as a plug-in hybrid, badged Hybrid EV.

There’s no seven-seat option for the Leapmotor C10, yet; it’s purely a five-seater, and it’s planning on getting your attention by having Tesla-style premium tech and driving experience for a more budget price.

The C10 costs from £36,500, and that price remains the same whether you choose the electric model or the Hybrid EV. Regardless, it has everything on it including a panoramic sunroof, huge touchscreen, adaptive LED lights and more, so you’re saving thousands over an equivalent-spec Model Y, Skoda Enyaq, BYD Sealion 7 or VW ID.4.

Other similarly sized rivals for the new Chinese SUV include the Nissan Ariya, Toyota bZ4X, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Skoda Kodiaq. However, it’s worth pointing out that if you sacrifice some of the interior space, you can get compact family SUVs like the Renault Scenic E-Tech, Kia EV3 and Kia Niro for the same price as the Leapmotor C10.

Anyway, while Leapmotor is a new and unknown brand in the UK, it’s reassuring to know that Stellantis owns 51% of the company. Stellantis is the huge car maker that was formed when Peugeot, Citroen, Fiat and many other brands merged a few years ago, so it’s got serious car-making knowledge and European heritage. And it’s Stellantis that’s actually launching and selling Leapmotor vehicles in European markets.

How practical is it?

You thought the Skoda Enyaq was roomy? You should see the C10. There is a vast amount of space in the back seats, noticeably more than you get in the Tesla Model Y or Renault Scenic. To the extent that it’s quite hard to reach the two rear cupholders that are placed on the back of the centre console, because you’re seated so far back from the front seats. You can obviously sit three people across the rear bench seat, and there’s a centre rear armrest. There’s no seven-seat option, though, and those rear seats don’t slide.

It’s clever that the front seats fold back to be horizontal, so that you can use it as a bed if you need to, or load a really long item all the way through the car to the dashboard, just in case you want to get your surfboard in there.

In the electric version, you get 435 litres under the tailgate; the plug-in hybrid has to make do with just 400, however. The boot floor is really wide and long, but it’s also quite shallow, which is where it loses out to the Skoda Enyaq that gets more than 100 litres more boot space for even better practicality. To be honest, space isn’t likely to be an issue in the Leapmotor C10, in the boot, the rear seats or up front. It’s a light, airy and roomy cabin. There’s underfloor storage in the boot of the EV (though not in the Hybrid), which will be good for keeping your cables out of the way.

The fairly sparse dashboard is focussed entirely on the huge touchscreen infotainment system. You do get a driver’s readout with the speed showing behind the steering wheel, though, unlike in the Model Y.

You might not love the upholstery in the C10, though. It’s silicon-based, and feels quite plasticky, which is great in a family car because it’s wipe-clean, but it feels out of place in a luxury car, which is what Leapmotor is pitching the C10 as. Our test car also had a purple-ish interior that was a bit odd, too.

What's it like to drive?

In pure electric form, the C10 gets a 215bhp electric motor that drives the rear wheels, making the car good for a 0-62mph time of 7.5 seconds. The Hybrid EV gets the same electric motor, though oddly, it take a second longer to hit 60mph - despite weighing 30kg less.

It’s set up with a focus on refinement and comfort, so while you don’t get air suspension, you do get very soft suspension that soaks up many of the road’s imperfections. Having said that, you still feel the corrugated road surfaces around town, and there’s also a lot of body lean and wallow, so anyone prone to travel sickness might find the C10 a bit trying. Things are more settled on the motorway.

There’s no one-pedal mode, but you can switch between the regenerative braking modes via the screen, ranging from completely off for free-wheeling, through to fairly heavy, although we found all the active regen modes fairly similar. It’s annoying to have to prod the touchscreen to choose your mode, too.

Choose the Hybrid EV, and the petrol component does its job well. It never actually drives the wheels - instead, it acts as a generator, charging up the battery which then powers the electric motor. As a result, Leapmotor says it can always choose the most efficient way to do so, and it'll only switch on when it's needed.

The result is that most of the time, the Hybrid EV feels a lot like the pure electric version to drive; the only difference is that the petrol engine kicks in from time to time, though even this is done pretty quietly.

Interestingly, you can actually choose how low you want the battery to get before the petrol engine comes on, from 9 to 80 per cent, allowing you to either prioritise or save battery power as much as you want. There's also a 'Power+' mode, which keeps the petrol engine on all the time to ensure the battery level doesn't dip if you're driving in a spirited fashion.

Will you ever want to do that, though? Hmm. The steering is pretty remote but is predictable enough, and while the C10 isn’t fast there’s enough acceleration when you want it. Overall, the C10 is just… okay to drive. Nothing special, but nothing offensive. You won’t really mind how it drives, though, as you’ll be too busy trying to work out how to turn off the unbearable driver aids that won’t stop bonging at you.

Technology, equipment & infotainment

The touchscreen is pretty good in terms of graphics and how quickly it responds, and it’s got in-built satnav, voice control that learns how you speak, and all the features you expect. There’s no Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, though, which is a huge frustration. We didn’t have much luck with the voice control responding to commands for different radio stations, but it did seem okay at changing the cabin temperature when asked; especially useful as the in-screen climate controls disappear when you’re in certain screens.

The C10 gets a five-star Euro NCAP crash test result, and gets all the safety kit and driver assistance features that you’d expect. However, the driver assist systems are, to be blunt, an utter nightmare. The system that detects if the driver is distracted, and beeps in warning, is the most neurotic we’ve encountered (and we’ve encountered a few). The lane-keep assist is very intrusive, too.

You can switch these ADAS systems off, which makes the C10 immeasurably better to spend time in, but you have to be in Park to get some of them off; it won’t let you control them while driving. We can understand the wisdom of that, given that these systems are proven to have cut road accidents, and Leapmotor obviously doesn’t want to encourage you to be rummaging through the settings while driving. But there is also an aspect of common sense that nobody wants to live with a car that just won’t stop beeping at you, no matter how careful you’re being. At that point, it’s the driver distraction system that is – ironically - becoming by far the greatest distraction to the driver.

The C10 is only available in the one trim level, and it gets everything including alloy wheels, heated and ventilated front seats, adaptive cruise control, weird silicone-leatherette upholstery, 360-degree parking cameras, air conditioning, keyless entry, powered bootlid, adaptive LED headlights, ambient lighting… The only thing it doesn’t get that some rivals offer is rear heated seats, but it’s still an impressive amount of standard equipment, especially given the C10’s price.

Leapmotor C10 running costs

Only two models of the C10 are available, both costing £36,500 and usefully undercutting most similarly-sized rivals. Finance is good, too, with Leapmotor offering monthly prices of £399 per month, with a £399 deposit and a very low interest rate. At that sort of money, it’s quite tempting, although (as with most new cars) it starts to look a lot less tempting when you consider the nearly-new and used alternatives.

The electric C10 uses a 69.9kWh lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) battery, for a WLTP combined range of 263 miles. Given its price, that’s not terrible, but it’s also not great given that you can get the Kia EV3 and Renault Scenic E-Tech for similar money and with official range of around 370 miles.

Sure, those electric family SUVs are much more compact, but they’re still spacious enough for a family of four and lots of lifestyle addenda in the boot. They also boast better driving dynamics, and we’d be willing to bet that they’ll benefit from less depreciation, too. And in the UK, having a really big car isn’t always that convenient. So, how much do you really want that rear passenger space in the C10? Hmm.

The Hybrid EV makes a slightly better case for itself. It's the same price, but it bests its plug-in hybrid rivals with a whopping electric range of 90 miles and charging speeds of up to 65kW. And given the only rivals that cost as little as this are rather small, its rather underwhelming boot capacity isn't as much of an issue.

Leapmotor C10 reliability

The Leapmotor C10 is too new to have any useful reliability data to work with, but it gets a warranty of four years and 60,000 miles, which is better than that offered by Skoda, VW, Audi and BMW. The C10’s battery is covered for eight years and 100,000 miles.

We'll update this part of the review as we learn more about the C10's reliability record over time.