Leapmotor C10 2025 review: Design

I do love a small line-up because why make things complicated? There’s only two grades available for C10: the base Style and the flagship Design grade, which is what we're testing for this review. The Design is sharply priced at $49,888, plus on-road costs.

2025 Leapmotor C10 (Image: Glen Sullivan)

Its closest rival is another new vehicle, the Geely EX5 Inspire ($44,990 MSRP) and it shares a similar layout and design, but the flagship C10 is a decent chunk more expensive. However, compared to its other mid-size SUV rivals like the Tesla Model Y Rear Wheel Drive ($63,400 MSRP) and Kia EV5 Earth ($64,770 MSRP), it’s significantly more affordable and offers great value for money. 

2025 Leapmotor C10 (Image: Glen Sullivan)

The C10 Design is well-equipped and includes synthetic ‘silicone’ leather upholstery, electric front seats with heating and cooling, a heated steering wheel, a huge 14.6-inch multimedia display, a panoramic sunroof with an electric sunshade, and satellite navigation – but you do miss out on any phone mirroring capability, which might annoy some.

Other goodies include dual-zone climate control, over-the-air updates, a 10.25-inch digital instrument cluster, rear privacy glass, a wireless charging pad, a 12-speaker sound system, a tyre repair kit, a 360-degree camera system, a powered tailgate and rear parking sensors.

The biggest win the C10's cabin has going for it is the available space, because there’s a stack of room in both rows and the wide seats are downright comfortable with thick padding and long under-thigh support, but you miss out on adjustable lumbar, which doesn’t translate well for long journeys. The seat heating and cooling functionality keep things still feeling premium.

Access is excellent for both rows with wide door apertures and high seat positions. It's an easy SUV to slide in and out of.

Usually you’d see some clever options in an EV of this size, but there's not many individual options. Up front there is a shallow glovebox, a decent middle console and a shelf underneath the centre console that can hold a small handbag. There are two cupholders and shallow storage bins, as well.

In the rear there are a couple of map pockets and cupholders, but that's kind of it in the way of storage. Amenities are a bit bare in this row with two directional air vents, a fold-down armrest and single USB-A and C ports, but you miss out on any premium items like climate control or heated outboard seats.

The boot space is practical with its squarish shape and 581L of storage capacity. The level loading space was great for sliding in bigger gear this week, and I like the underfloor storage compartment to hold any cables, but you don't get these included. You also get a powered tailgate in this model but surprisingly miss out on any frunk storage.

The flush door handles annoyed everyone this week but mostly my son because it was a two-handed affair for him. Otherwise, he complimented the view he got out of the low-set windows.

A special mention of the keycard you get with the C10 because it’s not the best and has hurt the practicality for our family.

A small caveat - as an owner there is an app for your phone to have a single digital key, which apparently has proximity unlocking. The keycard doesn’t have this feature and if you want to unlock or lock the vehicle, you have to swipe the card on the driver’s side mirror. When you have gear or a trolley load of groceries and want to pop them in the boot, you guessed it, you can’t open the tailgate remotely. Not without an app, at least. And I’m calling it out as silly for families. Imagine having your stroller, a toddler on a hip and trying to get into the car but fumbling with an app or a keycard!

2025 Leapmotor C10 (Image: Glen Sullivan)

The rest of the technology sort of follows this trend of looking good but not being user-friendly.

Charging options are okay but not class-leading for a new EV because you get a single USB-A and C port in each row, plus a 12-volt socket and a wireless charging pad up front, but the charging pad doubles as the ‘starter’ (for lack of a better word) because you have to place the keycard on it to start the car. Because of this, I didn’t use it for my phone. 

The lack of buttons and dials means you rely on the 14.6-inch touchscreen multimedia system for everything including adjusting your side mirrors. Give me a button any day! The touchscreen is responsive, though, and the built-in sat nav fairly simple to operate. There’s no smartphone mirroring in this vehicle, which I missed, but it feels very similar to Tesla, so it won’t be a surprise to those users.

The C10 is a rear-wheel-drive with a single electric motor located at the rear of the car, which produces up to 160kW of power and 320Nm of torque.

It can do a 0-100km/h sprint in 7.5 seconds, which isn’t super fast for an EV but sufficient to make the C10 Design feel quick enough on the open road.

The C10 has a 69.9kWh lithium ferro-phosphate battery and a WLTP driving range of up to 420km. It only accepts up to 6.6kW of AC power and all of those figures sit on the lower side for the class.

The Type 2 CCS charging port means you can hook up to a rapid DC charger, but it only accepts up to 84kW on this type of system, which is not great and sits below a lot of its rivals.

2025 Leapmotor C10 (Image: Glen Sullivan)

That means on an 150kW fast DC charger, you can go from 30-80 per cent in 30 minutes, but on a 50kW DC charger that figure will be closer to an hour and a half and no one has time for that with kids in tow! But a small bonus the C10 does have is vehicle-to-load capability, which just means you can charge stuff from it. 

The official combined cycle consumption figure is 19.8kWh/km (WLTP) and my consumption sat between 17.6-18.3kWh on the trip computer.

The C10 has a maximum five-star ANCAP safety rating from testing done in 2024. It features seven airbags and a whole suite of safety equipment, including standouts like rear cross-traffic alert and rear collision warning. 

Other equipment includes A rear child lock, tyre pressure monitoring, an emergency data recorder, LED DRLs, rear parking sensors, a 360-degree camera system, adaptive cruise control, lane-keep assist, lane departure alert, blind-spot monitoring, driver attention warning, driver drowsiness alert and traffic sign recognition.

Here’s the rub, though: a lot of the systems are not well-calibrated. The traffic sign recognition frequently says the wrong speed. The driver monitoring doesn’t like you scratching your nose, wearing sunglasses or looking at the multimedia screen and if you leave the lane-keeping aids on, you end up fighting the steering wheel.

And on top of all of that - you get a ridiculous amount of chimes and alerts in this car and even if you turn off all of the items I just mentioned, it doesn’t stop all of the alerts. And the car doesn’t tell you why it’s still chiming at you!

The C10 has AEB with forward collision warning and car, pedestrian and cyclist detection, and is operational from 5.0 to 150km/h.

The rear row has ISOFIX child seat mounts on the outboard seats and three top tether anchor points. The bench seat is wide enough to accommodate three child seats side by side.