Cheap plug-in hybrid family SUV tested
Likes
Easy electric-feeling accelerationEnough space for our little familySubtle, street-smart looks
Dislikes
Infuriating keyless entryUnderwhelming climate controlWeird brake feel and action
I’ll tell you, if there was a time to be winning CarsGuide’s long-term lottery, now is that time. I don’t know if you’ve been following the news, but the USA appears to have declared war on cheap petrol, or something, which has sent the pump prices soaring across Australia.
People are hoarding petrol like its Covid-era toilet paper, and – as I write this – the price for the cheapest E10 fuel is $2.32 per litre. A month ago, it was $1.66.
Now is not the time to be running a long-term vehicle with an engine that has any kind of ‘V’ in front of it, and a diesel dual-cab would make you weep, given diesel is even more expensive (and in fact sold out in many places right now).
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But not I, for my long-term chariot is the humble Leapmotor C10 REEV (in Design trim, currently $47,888, drive-away), which promises to properly sip fuel, given its pocket-sized petrol engine is only used to charge the battery or to provide power to the electric motor, but never to drive the actual wheels.
An EV with the backup of a petrol engine should you run out of power. Or that’s the promise, at least. But there is one catch.
If you read my first dispatch, you’ll know I treated the C10 REEV’s power supply like an afterthought over our first month together, topping it up when I could but not overly stressing when it was running low on power or fuel, and trusting the universe (or Leapmotor‘s engineers) to get me to where I was going.
My fuel use was predictably higher than you might expect, averaging a pretty ordinary 7.3L/100km of fuel. But this month I tried, really I did, to make amends.
2026 Leapmotor C10 REEV Design
I charged the C10 more frequently, either via my home wallbox or using Australia’s surprisingly expensive DC charging infrastructure. And my fuel use… got worse.
Over the past 480 kilometres, my fuel use has been 8.9L/100km. Now to be fair, I haven’t been fiddling with the drive modes, though I will this month. I’ve just been letting the hybrid brain do its thing, but still, that’s not great.
But I think I have identified the issue. See, the C10 REEV’s 28.4kWh battery is way smaller than the EV version’s 69.9kWh, and so its all-electric driving range is somewhere between 100kms and 150kms. Now that’s pretty good for a plug-in hybrid, but if you do a lot of driving – and I do – you find that the battery can be depleted pretty quickly.
2026 Leapmotor C10 REEV Design
And then it gets weirder still. Because this is designed to drive as an EV, when the battery is depleted you find you have almost no power underfoot while the petrol engine does double duties in charging the battery and providing power to the motors. It’s a weird, perhaps even dangerous, feeling, when you pull out onto a busy road and not much of anything happens. Once the battery takes on a little charge things do return to normal.
If you have a home charger, and plug in with zeal, then a microscopic fuel bill will be your reward. In fact, CarsGuide reader David tells me that he is averaging 4.2L/100km using higher-octane 98RON fuel, and that a careful charging schedule sees him using even less. But if you’re a bit like me, then you can expect to see numbers slightly worse than a good hybrid mid-size SUV.
Elsewhere, I’m finding the Leapmotor C10 REEV a little hit and miss in places. You’ve heard my rant about the key before (which you have to tap on the wing mirror to unlock, lock and turn off the vehicle), and it’s true that the Leapmotor app is a massive improvement.
View +3 Photos
But I find the proximity lock and unlock function takes a pretty laissez-faire approach to its job, working sometimes, and then simply deciding not to. And the curse that is the key card continues to haunt my life. Even with the app enabled, you still need to place the credit card-style key on the wireless charging pad to actually start the car, which kind of defeats the purpose of using the app in the first place.
The air-conditioning can take ages to chill on the hottest of Sydney days, and I find the lack of buttons infuriating. The wireless charge pad is only slightly less powerful than a sun dial (my phone has gone flat while sitting on it), and it also occasionally mistakes my empty baby seat for an actual baby, and honks the horn when I try to walk away. At least I think that’s the reason, though it’s possible it just doesn’t like me.
The flipside, though, is its sharp pricing, clever powertrain, ferociously generous equipment list, oodles of space, and pretty agreeable driving dynamics in town. The cabin is impressively quiet, the ride pretty comfortable, and – with the battery charged – the acceleration is plenty perky, too.
View +1 Photos
It’s also amazing how quickly we’ve gotten used to equipment that was, until recently, reserved for only the most expensive cars. My C10 Design is less than $50k on the road, and arrives with heated and ventilated front seats, a heated steering wheel, an air purifier, an integrated dashcam recorder – the list goes on.
There are some quirks to iron out, though. It’s onto the next month.
Distance travelled this month: 480.1km
Average fuel consumption this month: 8.9L/100km
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