With the C10, Leapmotor answers a question that nobody asked. What if a Tesla and a Porsche Macan had a baby?
Leapmotor is a Stellantis-backed SUV from China that’s part electric car, part petrol-powered backup plan — and entirely unbothered by your range anxiety. The company isn’t exactly new to this game. Founded in 2015, it has been releasing a car almost every year like clockwork. Then Stellantis came knocking two years ago, lending credibility and scale. Now, with 66,000 cars sold last month globally, the partnership looks less like a gamble and more like a masterstroke.
The C10 REEV (that’s Range-Extended Electric Vehicle, for those playing along) delivers 158kW and 320Nm, backed by a 28.4kWh battery and a 50-litre fuel tank. In plain English: it’s an EV that refuses to strand you. Range? Up to 970km — which is most of the way from Johannesburg to Cape Town, with respite as convenient as finding a regular petrol station. I jumped between a Tundra Grey model (where the Macan resemblance is uncanny) and a green one where the premium aesthetics are impossible to ignore. It’s fancy. The interior is slick and serene — think minimalist luxury with a 10.25-inch digital cluster, 14.6-inch touchscreen, and the usual connected goodies: app control, pre-cooling, OTA updates — everything short of making your morning coffee. Sadly, connectivity was a bit finicky – I didn’t quite get the Android Auto to work. Then there’s the swipey, swooshy nature of the climate control where you drag the air direction on the touchscreen – which I’m not a fan of, but it certainly is an impressive system. The materials were pleasant to touch, but if I’m honest, I wasn’t a fan of the ‘hearing aid beige’ in my green test car.
Safety? Five stars from both Euro NCAP and ANCAP, Chinese manufacturers really seem to have gotten the memo when it comes to the high tech safety requirements demanded in the West. Pricing lands at R759,900 for the Style and R799,900 for the Comfort, the latter riding on 20-inch alloys. And I gotta say, it’s a fair price for an impressive package. Yes, it’s not perfect, there are a couple of the aforementioned gremlins in the system – nothing an early adopter of technology isn’t used to.
So what’s it like to drive? Imagine a fridge that can also make toast. It does everything an EV should — quiet, clean, instant torque — but when the battery dips, it calmly sips petrol and carries on. No drama, no sweaty palms, no searching for chargers in small towns. With the Leapmotor C10, the ‘REEV’ bit isn’t just clever — it’s practical. The kind of car that makes you wonder why we didn’t think of this sooner. Add to that an engaging drive, ‘look at me’ styling and an attractive cabin chock full of toys and tech and it appears to be a solid contender in the EV market, offering a compelling package of performance, design, and safety.