Written by Seth Walton Updated: 1 November 2024

Overview

The Leapmotor T03 electric city car has reached European shores, facilitated by a partnership between the Chinese manufacturer and European motoring powerhouse, Stellantis (parent company of Peugeot, Vauxhall, Citroen and Fiat among others). The T03 is an electric city car, about the size of a Fiat 500e, first launched in China about four years ago.

Owing to the new partnership, and Stellantis’ £1.25bn investment into Leapmotor, new distribution and marketing channels have opened up for the car to make its way to Europe. 

Some electric city cars like the Fiat 500e still exist, and the new Dacia Spring offers a very low entry point into the EV market with its 16-odd grand price tag, but the T03 is something different altogether. It’s an EV supermini, brimmed with standard features that would usually be the preserve of top-end trim grades, and costs… wait for it… £15,995.

Now of course, it isn’t very fast or powerful – at all. It has a 37.3 kWh battery coupled to an electric motor that can propel the car from zero to 62mph 12.7 seconds and then reach a top speed of 80mph.

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Leapmotor says the T03 has a combined range of 165 miles (figures quoted form WLTP) along and an official efficiency figure of 16.3kWh/100km, though we returned a real world figure of 12.8kWh/100km after a 94.5km drive.

What’s the T03 like from behind the wheel? Read on for the full Parkers review, or head over to our how we test cars page to find out how I reached my verdict.

What’s it like inside?

The material selection in the cabin is a bit harsh – to be expected given the car’s price – but it has a few stylish accents dotted around. There are plenty of hard plastics covering the doors, the dash and the central cupholder, but they’re broken up by piano-black gloss plastic, while the door handles are made from polished aluminium. 

It’s pretty barren inside, but the varying surface textures suggested to me that a fair bit of thought had gone into elevating the ambiance of the cabin, rather than leaving it as just a bed of hard nasty plastics.

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There are next to no buttons on the dashboard, as all the functions are controllable via the central display. Bit annoying when on the road, but the layout is at least elegant. The display itself is no iPad – the graphics are a little fuzzy and it’s not the clearest software to navigate through, but I got used to it. 

Again, I think the display exceeds the car’s price point in quality, but what struck me most was the panoramic glass sunroof that also comes as standard. I would’ve expected to pay a healthy premium for such a feature but no, it really does come as part of the sub 16k package.

Comfort

As such a cheap car, the T03 doesn’t excel in this regard. The seats are finished in a springy, durable fabric, but there isn’t much in the way of support to ward off fatigue on the road. It’s not a car I would want to cover hundreds of miles in without stopping; that being said, head room is decent both in the front and on the back row thanks to its boxy shape and straight roof line.

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There’s hardly any room in the rear at all for any adults – a couple of kids might be alright – but I still probably felt more comfortable in the back of this car than I have done in the Toyota Yaris of latest Suzuki Swift.

Safety 

The T03 hasn’t yet been tested by Euro NCAP. Leapmotor says it has been assembled according to the most stringent of EU regulations, but as a cheap city car, it probably won’t score as well as a bigger European car might. Either way, we’ll report back here as soon as the car has been tested. You do, however, get a lot of safety kit as standard.

The T03 comes with driver attention warnings, forward collision warnings and lane keep assist as park of the base-price package. The Lane Keeping Assist (LKA) became a bit peeving, though, as despite turning the system off, the car would continue to alert me with an ‘Emergency Lane Keep Assist Activated’ notification at the slightest hint I might be leaving the centre line of the road.

What’s it like to drive?

The T03 isn’t quick, that’s fine, but it doesn’t have any inherent dynamic, go-karting characteristics either, despite its short wheelbase. The Fiat 500e, though about as fast, has tighter suspension which lends itself to greater dynamism on the road, but the T03 simply doesn’t have such a side to it. 

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The T03 is a city car, after all, and so low-speed cruising with frequent stops is its bread and butter. It has a couple of driving modes, including a sport mode which sharpens its accelerator response and then a steering-specific mode that adds a bit of extra weight to the steering resistance – worth keeping on all the time, in my opinion. 

It doesn’t have any trick suspension, and so the ride is a bit taught, but it’s not uncomfortable. It would report any road imperfections through the chassis and steering with some clarity, but not to the point where it became intrusive.

However, the electric motor’s incessant whine from about 15 up to 30 miles per hour did start to grate on me. It was too loud and piercing, and seemingly unstoppable as I couldn’t find a way to turn it off or just turn it down. Leapmotor, please sort out the EV whine.

What models and trims are available?

There’s only one trim option in the T03, what you see is what you get. One battery size, one power output, one car. You do, however, get plenty for your money, with all the aforementioned safety equipment, the panoramic sunroof, 10 adas functions and wireless phone connectivity. All for £15,995? Sounds like a bargain to me.

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As for rivals, there aren’t too many. On the ICE side you’ve got the new Suzuki Swift, the Dacia Sandero and the new MINI Cooper, though for a lot, lot more money. Staying with BEVs, there’s the Fiat 500e, the Dacia Spring and the Vauxhall Corsa Electric, though the T03 trounces all of them for value.

Now click through to the next page for my final verdict on the new Leapmotor T03.