Long-term test: Leapmotor B10

Well that didn’t last long. After living with our Leapmotor B10 for a little over a month, when I was starting to like the rather comfortable SUV, we’ve had to send it back because every time I plugged it into my home wallbox – or any AC charger for that matter – it killed them. By which I mean it caused a fuse or two to blow. 

The first time this happened, I thought my five-year-old wallbox had just packed in and I needed a new one. The second time, while I was trying to use the charger at my dad’s office, I thought I must be doing something wrong. But when it happened a third time at the Gridserve Electric Forecourt in Stevenage, I suspected it might be the car itself. By the fourth time, I knew something was very wrong with our Leapmotor. 

After figuring out how to get my wallbox working again, I activated the B10’s ‘Safety Current Limiting’ function that’s supposed to prevent an EV from overloading a house’s wiring by lowering the amperage and tried plugging it in again. Unfortunately, the charger still went kaput. 

Leapmotor has told me our B10 needs a new onboard charger, and that should hopefully fix this mysterious and very serious issue. The company is working to get us back on the road, but at the time of writing, Leapmotor still doesn’t know what caused the problem, and we’re not sure when the car will be back in action. 

Leapmotor B10: first report

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Comfy EV shows promise in spite of some annoying traits

• Mileage: 9,512 miles
• Efficiency: 3.6mi/kWh

Much like deputy editor Richard Ingram, who recently replaced his Volkswagen Golf R with a Citroen e-C5 Aircross, I have taken the motoring equivalent of a chill pill by swapping the fast, furious and rather flawed Abarth 600e for a soft, squidgy and oh-so spacious Leapmotor B10. 

As my colleagues will gratefully attest, the move from the stiff, uncompromising hot hatch into the much more comfort-focused Leapmotor has done wonders for my mood. 

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I’ve also been particularly grateful for the roughly 240 miles of range I’ve been getting from a full charge. Admittedly, this isn’t a huge amount – only just enough to get from London to Liverpool in one hit – but it’s a vast improvement over the Abarth, which couldn’t complete a round trip from my home in Hertfordshire to Gatwick airport and back without needing a top-up. Frustrating in isolation, but downright annoying given how often I drive this route for work. 

Unsurprisingly, with the B10 not being a serious hot hatch, there’s also a much more calming atmosphere to its interior. That’s thanks to its off-white upholstery, turquoise- blue ambient lighting and a huge panoramic sunroof that floods the cabin with sunshine. 

This makes the B10 easy to relax in while stuck in traffic on the M25, where I often find myself. My family have appreciated the room inside, and while the 430-litre boot isn’t as big as we might expect from an SUV this size, it’s enough for my daily needs or a couple of weekend bags. There’s lots of room under the boot floor for the charging cables, too. 

But the B10 is far from perfect, and it suffers from many of the same problems that I’ve encountered testing the latest Chinese cars. Particularly when it comes to the tech onboard. 

The biggest issue is the lane-departure and emergency lane-keep assist systems, which lose their minds on country roads. They think the car is too close to the white lines, which it’s impossible not to be because the lanes are narrow and the Leapmotor isn’t a small car – something I tried to point out to the B10 using a tape measure and a lot of patience. 

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I was very much hoping it would learn from my brief geometry lesson, because rather than just vibrating the wheel or a chime, the systems will suddenly and sharply steer the car towards a hedge or oncoming traffic. 

The lane-assist also occasionally panics when it detects a car coming its way, and will put me on a collision course with some shrubbery. My impression is the set-up has just been poorly calibrated, or Leapmotor hasn’t refined it for European roads.

True, you can turn these and the other ADAS systems off, but like most people, I often forget to do this before setting off, so have to hunt through the dozen or so menus in the touchscreen to find the right one while driving. There is a smartphone-like control centre with shortcut buttons for deactivating the speed-limit warning and driver-fatigue monitoring, but not the lane-keep tech. My hope is that Leapmotor will update these systems during my time with the car. 

I’ve also found other settings – such as how I want the steering and throttle response – will reset overnight, which I’ll only realise while on the road. The wireless Apple CarPlay also doesn’t always connect when I get into the car and will not work. The only solution I’ve found so far is to reset the B10 and pray.

*Insurance quote from AA (0800 107 0680) for a 42-year-old in Banbury, Oxon, with three points.

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