The Leapmotor C10 parked – when it’s at its quietest. Photo: James Coleman.
I have to start with an apology.
To anyone recently travelling southbound along Canberra’s Majura Parkway behind a car with its left indicator permanently blinking – that was probably me.
It wasn’t a mistake. I could see the blinking arrow on my screen and hear the clicking. But I needed the reprieve because I had just spent three hours from Sydney literally wrestling my test car, the Leapmotor C10.
I’d read the reports about how the safety systems were incredibly overactive in this car, but I thought I’d turned them all off before setting out.
It turned out I’d missed one called “emergency lane-keeping assistance”, and “emergency” – to Leapmotor, at least – means you got within about a metre of the road’s shoulder, and therefore must be brought to order with a series of four beeps and a tug on the steering wheel.
I later discovered that you can also turn this off, but you must first be in ‘Park’ mode. Why? Not sure. It was easier to cancel it out by indicating.
There were other bongs, too. Like when I spent a fraction of a second too long glancing at the speedo. Or exceeded the speed limit by 2 km/h, because I dared to do 60 km/h after hours in a school zone – and I knew this was okay, because I’m a human with eyes and a brain.
Look, all this is not really Leapmotor’s fault.
ANCAP, Australia’s car safety test program, has pushed carmakers down this infuriating path by penalising them in their crash tests if they don’t have at least some form of ‘Advanced Driver Assistance System’ (ADAS, for short).
But, if you’re going to sound alarms at me – let alone take control of my steering wheel – you better be right about it. And most of the time, the Leapmotor wasn’t.
In case you haven’t heard of the brand yet, it’s another recent arrival from China.
At the wheel. Or should that be ‘helm’?. Photo: James Coleman.
Leapmotor has been manufacturing EVs since 2019 in its home country, but in 2023, it attracted the attention of Stellantis – the same conglomerate behind Alfa, Fiat, Maserati, Jeep, RAM Trucks, and more – which bought a 20 per cent share and started distributing them around the world.
For now, there’s only one model – this one, the C10 – and, considering its size, it appears to offer good value.
There are two versions on sale in Australia: a plug-in hybrid that combines a battery with a 1.5-litre petrol engine for a combined range of 1150 km, or a fully electric one which offers up to 480 km of range.
Mine, the electric ‘Design’ model, starts from $49,888.
The word ‘design’ is probably a stretch. The styling is inoffensive, but bland to the point of forgettable. Probably its best features are the wheels – 20 inches of the sort of look aftermarket shops like to sell.
You can see that Leapmotor was clearly going for the whole Tesla vibe inside, too, with a massive touchscreen in the middle of the dash and, for the most part, nothing else. It took me several days to find out how to adjust the mirrors.
While digging through the digital menus, I did find something called ‘Nap Mode’, however, which will set the air-conditioning to “just so” and play gentle white noise in the form of drizzling rain, a babbling brook, or distant cricket chirping. So it is nice they’ve at least provided a way for you to unwind your rattled brain after the car has bashed it in with incessant bonging.
You can also set up the ambient lighting so it flashes a rainbow around the cabin in time to music, which probably had fellow motorists on the Hume Highway thinking Mooseheads had just passed them.
I’m sure these lights were brighter than the actual headlights, too, which didn’t have much on the old halogens in my 1999 Mitsubishi Verada.
The C10 is not very inspiring to drive either. The steering is boat-like, and the brake pedal feels as if it’s held in place by a trampoline spring. Unlike a Tesla, you won’t be doing any shooting away from traffic lights either – with one rear-mounted electric motor in the EV model, Leapmotor claims a lazy 0-100 km/h time of 7.5 seconds (a faster one is coming).
Boot space is decent. Photo: James Coleman.
But you get used to these things. The rest of the package handles bumps comfortably and is eerily quiet at speed, except when it’s bonging at you for something, which is not very often, admittedly. As a family car, it’d do very well.
But here’s the really good news: Leapmotor has heard the cries of others who have resorted to driving along with their indicators blinking.
Speaking to the media at the launch of the C10 hybrid earlier this month, Leapmotor Australia boss Andy Hoang said fixes are coming in the form of over-the-air updates, and yes, for existing customers too.
“Certainly, the feedback from very, very early on about the sensitivity of the ADAS has been one of the things that we continually work on,” he said.
“Over the last three updates, I think we’ve been able to get us to a much, much better place. We continue working at it … another update that’s coming that will again really address some of the feedback that we’ve had from customers.”
We all thank you.
The Leapmotor C10 EV starts from $45,888 for the Style and $49,888 for the Design. Photo: James Coleman.
2025 Leapmotor C10 Design BEV
- $49,888 (plus driveaway costs)
- Electric motor, 69.9 kWh battery, 160 kW / 320 Nm
- Rear-wheel drive (RWD)
- 0-100 km/h in 7.5 seconds
- 420 km estimated range
- 1995 kg
- 5-star ANCAP safety rating.
Thanks to Stellantis Australia for providing this car for testing. Region has no commercial arrangement with Stellantis Australia.
