We used to laugh at how bad Chinese cars were 10 or 15 years ago. They were a constant topic of ridicule on Western auto sites and shows. We watched those crash tests that showed cars’ structures collapsing like an accordion, and, at the time, we never thought Chinese cars would be any good. Boy, how things have changed.
Now, Western automakers are looking to Chinese manufacturers for inspiration and help. There's no better example of this than the Leapmotor T03, a tiny Chinese city car aimed at the Dacia Spring. While Leapmotor has only existed since 2015, it designed the T03 fully in house, and produces the battery pack itself. The result is a cheap, cheerful, impressive EV. It's so good, in fact, that one of the largest Western automakers has decided to buy in.
Little Leapmotor made Stellantis—a major European-based car conglomerate with over a dozen automotive brands under its belt—admit defeat. Like many Western automakers, Stellantis recognizes that it can't compete with Chinese brands on cost. Instead of trying to beat them, Stellantis entered a joint venture with Leapmotor to allow it to produce Chinese cars in Europe, allowing it to circumvent hefty import duties.
Stellantis invested $1.5 billion in the company, giving it a 20% stake in Leapmotor. Perhaps more importantly, it has a 51% stake in Leapmotor International, the export side of the business. The company plans to export cars around the world, and even build the TO3 at a factory in Poland. Stellantis is not the only automaker that has teamed with a Chinese partner, but it is the first to bring a Chinese car and assemble it in Europe.
When I asked the local Leapmotor importer here in Romania about where my T03 press tester was manufactured, they said it likely came from China. However, Leapmotor officially began European production in a Stellantis factory in Poland in September of 2024. That plant will make both the T03 city EV and a larger battery-powered SUV called the B10, both of which are already on sale throughout Europe.
This is an impressive little car, especially when you know the entire story behind it, and it was for me a real eye opener since I've not had the chance to drive that many new Chinese cars. If this small EV from a small, fledgling Chinese automaker is this good and there are automakers from the People's Republic with a lot more resources and know-how, this is a sign that the global auto industry is being turned on its head.
How Big Is It?
Measuring just 142.5 inches (3.62 meters) in length and 65 inches (1.59 m) wide, the T03 is about two feet shorter than a Chevrolet Bolt EV and a bit narrower too. This gives it slightly unusual proportions—it looks a bit tall and narrow—but this makes the car very easy to maneuver in tight urban spaces, and the interior is surprisingly roomy given its footprint.
With the driver’s seat set to my driving position (I’m about six feet tall), I had just about enough knee room not to feel trapped. My head did touch the headliner in the back seats, though, so traveling back there would get tiresome after half an hour. Still, two slightly shorter passengers could travel for longer in the back of a T03 in relative comfort.
Even though it’s a slightly bigger vehicle with a longer wheelbase than its main rival here in Europe, the Dacia Spring, the T03 allocates more of its interior room for passengers, and it has a very small trunk. It offers just 7.4 cubic feet of cargo space, and the hold looks pretty tiny. But you can easily fit your weekly shopping in there. You can also fold the rear seat to free up 31 cubic feet for when you occasionally need extra space.
Does It Look Good?
Even though the T03 debuted last year in Europe, it was launched in China almost five years ago and hasn’t been restyled since. It’s starting to look a bit dated compared to rivals like the much more rakish BYD Seagull, which will come to Europe in 2025 and cost about the same.
The T03 has a cute face that reminded me of one of the pig characters from the mobile game Angry Birds. It looks very upright and tall from the front, but if you move more to the side of the vehicle, you see that its roofline subtly dips toward the rear. The best compliment I could pay the rear end is that it matches the design of the front very well.
It rides on 15-inch wheels with tall and narrow 165/65 tires, which surprisingly don’t look too small for the body. They are also quite inset, and this makes the car look a bit ungainly. During my time with the car, I kept thinking that with some larger wheels that fill the arches better the T03 could look a lot better.
What’s It Like To Drive?
With its relatively narrow track width and tall body, you’d think the T03 wouldn’t be too at home taking a corner briskly. This was one of the first things I tried with the car, and I was surprised to discover that even pushing it into a corner, it never felt like it was going to topple over—far from it, actually.
The steering, while not very quick in terms of ratio, provided more feel than I was expecting, and I could feel when the front end grip was about to run out. Sudden direction changes also didn't faze it, even if there was a bit of body lean. Driving this car, I was reminded just how much more stable EVs generally feel with a belly full of batteries keeping the center of gravity low.
It helps that the T03 is very light by electric car standards, weighing in at 2,590 pounds (1,175 kilograms). That’s hundreds of pounds less than a GMC Hummer EV’s battery pack. The benefit of this low mass is very nimble handling and a feeling of agility that you don’t get from many EVs.
The T03 gets its oomph from a single motor driving the front wheels. It produces 95 horsepower and 116 pound-feet (158 Nm) of torque and propels the T03 to 62 mph (100 kph) in 12.7 seconds, on to a top speed of 81 mph (130 kph). It feels much quicker than the Dacia Spring, and it pulls better than you expect given the leisurely on-paper sprint time.
It stops well too, with disk brakes on all four corners. I did notice that if you turn the steering wheel while under braking, the car seems unsettled, but the stability control program keeps things in check.
The three driving modes (Eco, Comfort and Sport) not only affect pedal mapping and power delivery, but they also change the strength of the regenerative braking. You have no other way of controlling it, so if you want a certain regen feel, you must stick to the mode that offers it. In any of the modes, regen never feels particularly strong—I wouldn’t call this a one-pedal EV.
Does It Have Toys?
Surprisingly for a car this cheap, the T03 comes with many standard features. You get a large panoramic glass roof (with an electric retractable sunshade) and a suite of ADAS functions (mandated by EU law for all new vehicles), including adaptive cruise control, autonomous emergency braking, forward collision warning, lane keep assist and speed limit recognition. It even has a drowsiness-detecting camera pointed at your face at all times.
While all of the ADAS systems seem to work, they are all a bit intrusive and annoying, each with its own chime that gets on your nerve after driving the car for a while. Listening to all the beeps before turning the safety systems off by going through each individual setting in the infotainment was probably the worst part of the T03 driving experience.
Bluetooth connectivity is standard but without Apple CarPlay or Android Auto support. This is why my test car came with an aftermarket head unit, which can mirror your phone, but it’s not necessary given the 10.1-inch infotainment display. Its graphics look a tad pixelated but have a logical Tesla-inspired menu structure, and it generally works quite well.
You will find yourself using the central screen a lot in this car: You use it to change driving modes, change climate settings, turn on the lights manually or adjust anything else since there are no physical controls. I used it most often to turn off the audible speed limit warning sound, which is mandated on all new cars sold in the European Union, and it’s absolutely infuriating.
Most manufacturers offer an easy shortcut to disable this system, but you must go through all the menus every time to do it in the T03. The driver gets a decent 8-inch display, which does the job without standing out. The car has its own 4G internet connection, which makes it compatible with over-the-air updates and runs the navigation app without requiring your phone to be connected.
You get rake adjustment for the steering wheel and seats covered in what felt like a surprisingly high-quality fabric material. The seats look good too, and they offer much better lateral support than the seats in the Dacia Spring.
How Much Range Does It Have?
With a 37.3 kilowatt-hour battery, the T03 is rated for 165 miles (265 km) of WLTP range. That cycle is generally more optimistic than the U.S' EPA figures. When I got the car, the battery was 99% full and displayed an estimated range of 116 miles (187 km). That’s pretty decent for an electric city runabout, and it'd likely get closer to the WLTP estimate on a warmer day.
Leapmotor points to the claimed urban driving range as being much higher than in mixed driving. The urban WLTP rating goes up to 245 miles (394 km), although even with the lightest right foot and perfect conditions, this seems like a stretch for a vehicle with a sub-40-kWh battery pack.
Unlike the Dacia Spring, which has an air-cooled battery pack, the Leapmotor actively controls its battery pack temperature. That should help the battery last longer, as air-cooled packs tend to struggle when exposed to high temperature. But it doesn't have a heat pump, which is sad if unsurprising for a cheap EV. The range estimate also doesn’t change in real time when you turn on cabin heating like it does in most other EVs, but it adjusts as you drive around.
Unlike the Dacia, the Leapmotor includes fast-charging capability standar. The T03 can replenish its battery at up to 48 kW, which is good for a 10 to 80% charge in 55 minutes. It’s not even close to making the list of EVs with the highest charging power, but since most buyers will probably plug in at home most of the time, using the car’s 7.4 kW onboard charger, it should be fine.
Driving the T03 mostly around town, its displayed efficiency number got very close to 5 miles/kWh, which is pretty good, although it’s a bit less efficient than a Spring. If you drive it gingerly in town, you could probably get it to exceed that figure.
Is It Good Value?
Gallery: Leapmotor T03 InsideEVs Review
The Leapmotor T03 costs €20,000 ($20,830) here in Romania, which is about the same as in other European Union countries and twice what it costs in China. The actual price buyers pay drops to €15,000 if you factor in the €5,000 you get from the Romanian government, and similar EV incentive schemes exist in many EU countries, helping spur EV sales. The incentive used to be €10,000 or up to half of the vehicle's value in Romania, but it was capped at €5,000 in 2024, following the recent European trend to reduce or eliminate these incentives altogether.
Leapmotor has a deal with Stellantis, which allows it to assemble the T03 in Europe. The car I drove came from China, but Leapmotor wants to build its cars in the EU to avoid paying the hefty import duties that were put in place last year. That may partially explain why it's so much more expensive here than it is in China.
The manufacturer announced in January that its vehicles were on sale through 400 Stellantis outlets in Europe, and it planned to increase that to 500 in 2025. Even though it went on sale here in September of last year, I haven’t seen any T03s on the road in the area where I live, although I have seen quite a few brand new Dacia Springs.
Since the T03 is more expensive than the Spring (which is sold as Dacia, a Romanian brand), it probably won’t match its popularity here. However, it is a slightly fancier car with more performance and range. It’s arguably a better EV than the Spring, and the price difference is justified. I think they should have called it something catchier than T03, though. The name is not especially memorable, and it also needs a facelift since it looks a bit old-fashioned parked next to a new Spring or some of its other competitors.
Still, the TO3 shows just how far Chinese automakers have come. A decade ago, no one would consider importing a Chinese car. But these days, a brand like Leapmotor—not even one of China's biggest names—can do something Stellantis can't manage on its own. While it may not be as attractive as the Spring, the T03 is a better EV, and further proof that Western automakers can't afford to ignore Chinese competitors. And if they can't beat them one on one, teaming up may be a better path.
