Leapmotor B10 2026 review: New Chinese electric car targets MG S5 EV and BYD Atto 3 small SUVs
What you are looking at will soon be one of the most affordable electric SUV options in Australia. And I say one of because EV prices are fluctuating so quickly. Something will have no doubt changed by the time I finish this sentence. But the point is it will be cheap. It’s the Leap Motor B10, little brother to the C10 that we already have in market and the latest offering from the Stalantis backed Chinese player. So what are you going to get? Well, it’ll arrive in two driveaway trim levels. That starts with the style which is $ 38,990. then steps up to this the design which is $41990. In typical Chinese fashion, both are ferociously well equipped. But there is one potential drawback. Stick around for a moment. I’ll tell you exactly what that is. It all kicks off with the style in which you’re really not very much spend. Earns you 18-in alloy wheels, LED lighting, a glass roof with a sun shade and pop out door handles. Inside there’s a 14.6 in central screen, an 8.8 in digital dashboard, a six- speakeraker stereo, a wireless charging pad, and a built-in dash cam. Then there’s the design or long range which gets a bigger battery and a better driving range. It also adds fake leather seats which are heated and cooled up front, a heated steering wheel, a LED light bar at the rear, and automatic wipers. There’s also a 12 speaker stereo, a powered tailgate, and ambient interior lighting at this level, too. That’s a lot of extra driving and extra stuff for 3 grand. And so, I know which one I’d be choosing when this thing arrives later this year. Now, both share the same electric motor. It produces 160 kW and 240 Nm and powers the rear tires. That means a sprint to 100 km an hour in around 8 seconds and a top speed of 170 km an hour. But the big change is in the battery size. The cheapest B10 model gets a 56.2 kWh LFP battery good for a claimed 361 km on the WLTP cycle. The design though ups that to 67.1 kwatt hours which ups the range to 434 km. There’s also a difference when it comes to DC charging with the smaller battery set up for 140 kW while the bigger battery gets up to 168 kW. That means going from 30 to 80% in around 20 minutes. When it comes to AC charging, i.e. plugging it in at home and set up for 11 kW. Now, the B10 stretches 4.5 m in length, 1.8 m in width, and 1.6 m in height. There or thereabouts is a few millimeters different there. And the point the brand says is to make a small SUV that feels very big on the inside. And I know that sounds a bit like marketing guff, but the reality is I’m sitting behind roughly my own driving position. I’m 175 cm and I’ve got plenty of knee room and plenty of headroom, too. And in fact, you could really, thanks to the flat floor, sort of stretch out into any of the seats. Really is a pretty comfortable way to get around. Now, when it comes to the boot, you’ll find 430 L there with the rear seats in place. And that’s not bad. It’s actually only a little bit less than some midsize SUVs. Now, it is a clean and modern feeling space here in the cabin of the B10. And I’ve got to say, it doesn’t feel like a cheapy entry-level EV. It all looks really nice. Part of that is this big screen that takes pride of place in the center of the dash here, but I’ve got to say it is a tiny bit fiddly. All of the car’s key functions are controlled through this screen, so you do spend a bit of time digging through menus. But I’ve got to say it looks nice, as does the rest of the detailing in the dash. The only problem is, while it looks really great, doesn’t feel all that flash. All of this stuff is after all just hard plastics. Now, the promise here is a Chinese car that doesn’t drive like a Chinese car. The B10 was developed with Stalantis. It was tested at the Balco proving ground, and they say that they want to make it feel as European as possible in terms of its ride quality and comfort. It’s also rear wheel drive. It has perfect weight distribution, and all of that promises to make it feel a little bit sportier. And I say sportier because it does feel sportier than the C10, but it never feels like an outandout performance car. In fact, the acceleration, even though it clips 100 km an hour in 8 seconds, is never that sort of push you back in your seat stuff. Instead, it’s just a steady flow of smooth constant power that’s so typical of electric vehicles. Now, now when they say European, I take that to mean a flatter, firmer ride quality as opposed to that sort of floaty, willowy suspension that’s sometimes typical of new Chinese products. And it does feel as though they’ve ironed out a lot of that in this vehicle. One word of warning, the roads here in Europe are billion table smooth, so they’re not really an indication of how it’s going to perform on Australia’s broken road surfaces, but I found it to feel pretty comfortable, pretty competent, and pretty connected to the road below the tires. I really do like it more than the C10. In fact, we even took this up some sort of twisting mountain roads yesterday, and it handled itself pretty well. Again, it’s not going to be an out-out performance car, but there’s not a huge amount of body roll. There was enough grip from the tires, and it all felt pretty competent and pretty composed. But there are some downsides. I don’t know if you can hear that chiming in the background, but the ADAS systems in this car are diabolical. Leap motor says they’ve improved them dramatically from the first generation C10, which had its own overthe-air updates to improve them in that car, but I still find them utterly unlivable. And I assure you, the first thing you’ll be doing is turning them all off. The other quirk is this screen behind the steering wheel. It’s positioned in such a way that every time you turn the wheel, it covers each edge of the screen. The only issue is those edges of the screen are the only things that give you any relevant information. The left is your driving speed. The right is things like your navigation instructions. The middle is just a picture of the car on the road, which serves really no purpose at all. So, I don’t really understand why we have this long wide screen, but only tiny parts of it are relevant, and those tiny parts are constantly covered up by the wheel. Now, the other thing that might hold customers back is the driving range. In the lower battery model, it starts with a three, and we all know that WTP testing is kind of a best case scenario. you’re unlikely to actually achieve that in the real world, which means that model is really going to be relegated to being a city car rather than a long-distance tourer. And the same is also true of the bigger battery to be honest. 400 plus KS will likely drop to 300 and something in the real world. Again, you’re not going to be traveling across the state in it. But it is ferociously good value at $ 3890 or $41990 drive away. That presents really good buying. There is a ton of equipment in this car and at no stage does it feel like a cheap model. Everything’s sort of nicely put together. Yes, some of the materials are a bit hard and scratchy, but it doesn’t feel like some stripped back offering, provided, of course, you can put up with the safety systems, which I can’t. In that case, learn how to turn them off and learn it quickly. So, in short, the B10 feels like another step in the right direction for Leap Motor. I like it better than their first car, and it shows things are moving in the right way for them. This would make smart city buying for those looking for a small electric SUV. [Music]
Andrew Chesterton previews the 2026 Leapmotor B10, a new small SUV from China that’s expected to take on the MG S5 EV and BYD Atto 3 in Australia. This early look explores where the B10 fits in the growing affordable electric SUV market.
Andrew walks through the full model range, covering design, cabin features and technology. He looks at practicality, including passenger space, storage and boot capacity, and examines build quality and interior materials to see how the B10 compares with established rivals.
On the road, the review focuses on driving impressions, ride comfort and refinement, along with the electric and hybrid powertrain options available globally. The video also considers pricing expectations, standard equipment and safety features to see whether the 2026 Leapmotor B10 has what it takes to compete in Australia’s value-driven SUV segment.
#Leapmotor #B10 #Review
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Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
00:23 Pricing and features
01:19 Under the bonnet
01:36 Efficiency
02:07 Practicality
02:44 Interior design
03:15 Driving
06:11 Verdict
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Read Andrew’s full review: https://bit.ly/4quaPuw
Check out our Leapmotor hub: https://bit.ly/4hucs7D
Find more SUVs: https://bit.ly/47IILfC
Visit our EV Guide: https://bit.ly/3DjhPTX
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