Louth Motors: Can the Leapmotor B10 tempt you?
168kW Charging and Porsche Styling, but can the Leapmotor B10 tempt you?
It’s always a challenge entering a market to secure sales. Nowadays, it’s simply not enough to be competitive to attract buyers and the recent Dacia Spring demonstrates this best.
The price was luring but the package was wrong and for not much more money you got a lot more car in the guise of the Hyundai Inster that came with all the refinement and quality you expect from Hyundai.
The Spring, which had moderate success in Europe, is no longer sold here. Buyers have a mental quality/price baseline that if not met thwarts a sale. Leapmotor have added the B10 to their range which now stands at three models.
They arrived with keen pricing and higher quality and want a slice of the Irish Market and now have a C-SUV segment car which is fiercely competitive.
Think of the B10 as a scaled down version of the larger C10 because the design is so so similar.
It's hard to differentiate them on the road and the avoidance of a unique design must allow Leapmotor save a few bob because the C10 represents very good value.
I drove the all-electric version and it competes with the likes of the MG S5, the Skoda Elroq and the Kia EV3. It’s actually within a few millimetres, more or less, the same size as the VW Tiguan so it's a substantial car.
The incredibly long wheelbase allows for a flat floor and tons of space for rear passengers. Spacious is the perfect description of it and you get a 430l boot with a handy 25l frunk.
It is also available as a Hybrid (or more correctly a range extended EV-REEV) and it’s a sign of the times we live in that that form of powertrain costs more than the all electric power plants which sees new models from all manufacturers being cheaper when all-electric.
After 6 months of new car sales in Ireland this year all-electric cars have out sold petrol-only and diesel-only cars. The predictions of recent years have come to fruition.
The look of the B10 is quite anonymous and hasn’t a feature that identifies it as a Leapmotor. It does, like the C10, have a rear that looks very like a Porsche and is the sole talking point.
The sides and front are curvy and smooth and whilst it delivers a slippery wind tunnel drag co-efficient, it hasn't managed to do that with a bit of panache or uniqueness.
This might sound unfair but it is the exact shape you’d expect from a new Chinese brand and if you have seen other Chinese brands that have not yet hit our shores you'd notice it could have been from any of them.
That said, it is not grating or jarring and you won't recoil on seeing it.
You certainly won't if you opt for it in Dawn Purple which sounds garish but in reality is quite fetching.
That 3 model lineup is about increase to 4 with the imminent arrival of the B05 that goes some way to banish the anonymous look argument.
Inside it is like a lot of Chinese electric cars where all the controls are subsumed into the central infotainment system.
That's not desirable for lots of reasons and for the short time I am with a car it's a pain to set it up for personal use for my time with the car.
So I always try to use voice control to avoid searching through menus and screens and the voice recognition for straightforward stuff worked well.
For less used/accessed features you have to learn the car's language and it’s just not worth it for me. If you are the owner then it is well worth doing and talking is a lot safer than scrolling so take the time to learn the car's language, any car that is.
Materials used in these new brands have come in, nearly always, at above average from other makers and the B10 is no different.
The seats, whatever they are made of, feel classy and approaching premium and I don't know if an animal has been sacrificed or our ecological future to deliver such nice feeling materials.
There are two trim levels Style and Design and the entry Style is very well specified for the price of €32,984 for the 56kWh battery. There's a 67kWh battery also available too.
The bigger battery with the higher spec Design trim is only just short of €3,000 more and makes, for me, more sense.
It has 17 smart ADAS systems to assure you that Leapmotor takes your safety seriously. There’s wireless phone mirroring, wireless charging, NFC card access as well as an app and the ability to update the car’s software over the air - they really are mobiles/tablets on wheels.
That software isn't perfect and occasionally, you can feel the system pausing to figure out exactly what menu you've just chosen, but in general, it is stable and reliable.
The drive is what lets this car down for anyone that values driving feel. Some of you do but most people driving these days seem to not care too much.
It never gives the driver a feeling of connection to the road and that disassociation is a no no for me. For others the lightness is prized and maybe they are right because you wont buy a B10 for spirited driving and that being the case it delivers a comfortable ride.
Yes it leans a little bit too much in bends and the noise levels are high at high speed but in the urban arena these situations don't present themselves too often.
This means you won't get many complaints from your passengers who will get a comfortable trip.
It recharges at a max. rate of 168kW and takes 20mins to get from 10% to 80% doing so giving you according to Leapmotor 347km of additional range.
The quoted range is 434km for the larger-battery version which for me worked out at 390km which isn't too far away at all and firmly in the “Ronseal" category.
The real competitor for the Leapmotor B10 is the MG S5 which is a cracking car. The problem for Leapmotor is that if you want to eat the lunch of the competitor that's eating everybodys lunch then a serious improvement in driving refinement is needed with keener/better pricing to tempt them because €500 of a difference just won’t cut it.