Citroen C3 Aircross vs Leapmotor B10

What's the difference?

It's a good car, no question. Individuality is key to Citroen's brand appeal and you get that, too. A comfortable cabin, plush ride and hot damn, it's way too expensive, which is a crying shame. You could argue - as Citroen's product planners probably have - that it doesn't help to offer one in the mid-$20K mark because it won't make much money because so few people will buy it. Drop it at a premium, only lose a few opportunistic buyers but make more money per unit with committed fans? Why not, I guess?

Like most French cars, I'm glad it exists for weird French car fans like me to consider.

I’ll be a shame if the B10 doesn’t sell well, because it doesn’t suffer from many of the downfalls of its compatriots and its price is extremely competitive for what you get.

As a comfortable smallish SUV, it meets par, and it’s on the better side of tech when it comes to cars from China, and it doesn’t have any major on-road red flags.

You really wouldn’t be disappointed with this having paid $40K, just skip the base model and go for the Design.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with travel, accommodation and meals provided.

As you might imagine, it's an individual design. Lots of Cactus cues, like the roof rails, bluff front end and stacked headlights Hyundai, uh, appropriated for the Kona. Curiously, no 'airbumps' along the side despite the C3 hatch having them...

The 17-inch wheels somehow look tiddly given the airspace over the wheels and I can report that black is not really this car's colour, even with the contrasting white roof and weird Mazda 121 Shades special edition venetian blind treatment on the quarter window. Bit of an '80s throwback there for you.

Lots more Cactus inside though, starting with the brilliant front seats, squared-off steering wheel and funky air vents. The little tray on top of the glove box is good, but it isn't rubber-lined, so that's annoying.

The Top Gun handbrake is hilarious but apart from the texturing of the fabric on the seats, it's a tad dark below the windowline. 

Right after we praise the B10 for its value, we need to talk about its looks. A slight drop in tone as the second Leapmotor to land in Australia looks an awful lot like the first, and it’s relatively bland.

It’s not ugly, but it’s not particularly inspiring and there’s not much character to this little electric SUV.

It’s got a very upright silhouette at the front with a slightly sloping roofline at the rear, so the overall shape is appealing, but the lack of distinct features makes the B10 an anonymous commuter for now, especially with its similarities to the C10.

You can tell them apart by the C10’s slightly larger size if they’re near each other, or the B10’s more in-line headlight bar, where the C10’s have a ‘droop’ at the sides.

The large section of black at the lower half of the front is also unappealing, though darker colours like the optional 'Starry Night Blue' or 'Dawn Purple' (both $990) blend into it better than standard 'Light White'.

To its credit, at least the B10 doesn’t fall victim to the design crutch of adding trim and plastic for no reason.

In terms of the specifics, the B10 is 4515mm long, 1885mm wide and 1665mm tall with a 2735mm wheelbase, making it quite the large small SUV.

Inside, the cabin looks and feels roomy thanks to the test car’s light interior, decent windows and the light from the sunroof, as well as the fact the EV powertrains are compact and generally don’t interfere with cabin space.

Materials aren’t all scratchy hard plastic, though it is dotted around, and the general look of the B10 inside feels more premium than its price would have you thinking, despite the simplicity of the layout and design.

Even for a little car, the Aircross could do better. The lack of a proper cupholder provision for the car - a solitary spot at the rear of the centre console - is mildly baffling until you remember that this car is from France. The French hate a cupholder but, obviously, you can fit wine bottles in the doors.

It's worth repeating just how comfortable and supportive the front seats are on any given journey. Broad but supportive and somehow perfectly sprung, I would cheerfully rip out most other front seats and replace them with these.

The rear seats are less of these things and anyone who forces anyone to use the middle seat should be ashamed of themselves. The headroom is good back there, though.

The boot is a big one for the size of the car, swallowing 410 litres and expanding to 1289 litres with both rear seat sections folded.

Getting into the B10 requires a minor annoyance - unlocking and locking the car requires a keycard to be tapped on the drivers’ side mirror like you're scanning to access your floor in a hotel elevator.

There’s an app that adds a fair bit of functionality, but having to whip your phone out ahead of jumping in the car is also irritating.

Once you’re in, though, the space inside the B10 is well laid-out, even if much of its functionality is crammed into the big central touchscreen - it’s always ‘points off’ for a lack of physical buttons in this section of a review.

Once you’re used to it and have sorted out your personal settings on the multimedia software, it becomes more natural and less distracting, though Apple CarPlay and Android Auto would occasionally lag in the car on test.

The good news is they now exist for the brand in the B10, with the Leapmotor C10 still lacking the vital in-car mirroring tech.

The ergonomics and interior space work well, generally, with comfortable pews and good vision, plus decent spaces to keep things out of the way. The phone charger being in a very visible and accessible position might tempt some naughty screen-keen drivers, and being in the sun without a vent for cooling while charging means your phone will get proper hot.

The second row is extremely spacious, belying the fact this car is classified as a small SUV. Oodles of legroom and enough headroom for a tall adult means the B10 outguns rivals in terms of good options for parents (note the B10’s extremely strong 95 per cent child safety score from ANCAP, too) or anyone who needs to cart humans around regularly.

Behind the second row is a 490L boot, which becomes 1475L when the second row is folded down.

There’s space under the floor for cables and messy bits, but unfortunately no spare wheel, just a tyre repair kit, so more points off for that.

Talking about the price may well be us highlighting the Leapmotor B10’s strongest point right up top, because you can get into one for less than $40K, drive-away, before the end of March 2026.

While regular pricing for the B10 starts from $37,888, before on-road costs, for the base Style and $40,888 for the kitted-out Design LR, Leapmotor has a limited-time deal starting from $38,990, drive-away, for the B10 Style and $41,990 for the Design LR. LR for Long Range, by the way.

That runs until the end of March, 2026, but even its standard pricing is impressive for what you get.

The entry-grade B10 Style comes with plenty of kit, including an 8.8-inch LCD driver display and large 14.6-inch central multimedia touchscreen, a wireless phone charger, auto climate control, a panoramic sunroof with retractable shade, heated mirrors, auto LED headlights, a set of 18-inch wheels, surround-view parking cameras with dashcam recorder capability, over-the-air (OTA) updates and Level 2 advanced driver assistance (ADAS).

That’s a list of inclusions that can, on paper, rival much more expensive models.

The Design LR, for not much more money, adds heated and ventilated synthetic leather seats with electric adjustment (six-way for the driver, four-way for the passenger), a heated steering wheel, a 12-speaker sound system, ambient lighting, a power tailgate, tinted privacy glass, LED tail-lights and auto folding mirrors.

You’d hate to be in the product planning team of a legacy manufacturer trying to put together a competitive spec for a small electric SUV to sell in Australia against that.

Even other small electric SUVs from China come with much smaller batteries or fewer features around the $40K mark, like the MG S5 EV Essence RWD with its 49kWh battery ($42,990 D/A) or the base Geely EX5 Complete FWD ($40,990 BOC) and the higher Inspire variant is $4000 more.

One of the great engines in mass-produced road cars today has found its way under the bonnet of the Aircross. Peugeot-Citroen's 1.2-litre three-cylinder turbo is a cracking engine, serving up 81kW/205Nm through a six-speed Aisin-sourced auto to the front wheels.

While the 11.8-second dash to 100km/h is, uh, leisurely, the torque figure means that on the move it's not as sluggish as that number or its 1200kg kerb weight would suggest.

There’s only one powertrain option for the Leapmotor B10, a single, rear-mounted electric motor that produces 160kW and 240Nm, which makes the electric SUV good for a claimed 0-100km/h time of 8.0 seconds in both variants.

Top speed is a claimed 170km/h, also regardless of the variant.

Citroen claims a handy 6.6L/100km on the combined cycle and my week with the fizzy Frenchie included a trip over the hills and far away as well as a lot of suburban running. 

The digital display on the dashboard read 7.3L/100km, which isn't bad going without stop-start. It does require 95 RON premium fuel, though.

Leapmotor claims the B10 will, from its LFP battery of either 56.2kWh for the Style or 67.1kWh for the Design LR, draw 17.2kWh/100km or 17.3kWh/100km, respectively under WLTP testing.

The result is the Style offering up a 361km WLTP-tested driving range, and the Design LR a more useful 434km.

While we were unable to properly confirm this claim on the launch, the trip computer after a mix of highway driving and more spirited back-road testing displayed a figure of 13.5kWh/100km, while the previous 1447km of driving had reportedly measured in at 14.7kWh.

Charging from 30 to 80 per cent takes approximately 20 minutes regardless of spec and battery size. The smaller battery can be charged via DC fast-charging at a maximum 140kW, and the larger at 168kW. Both max out at 11kW under AC charging.

French cars have a very specific audience in this country, which includes weirdos like me. I've owned Peugeots and Renaults and loved every second of it.

Top of my list after my darling baby boy wrote off our family car (which was bought for him to drive), the Cactus was close to the top of the list. This fandom isn't blind, though - I know what I'm getting myself into having to dispassionately assess their faults and foibles as well as their triumphs and tangible benefits.

If I'm being honest - and it's just you and I here - I didn't think I'd like the C3 Aircross, there was just something about its SUV pretensions. I can't say the looks grabbed me and the inexplicable exclusion of the airbumps made me irrationally cross.

But once you slip behind that square-ish wheel into the comfortable embrace of those excellent seats, you forget the aesthetics (which did grow on me, even in black). 

The 1.2 turbo is, as ever, eager to please and well-matched to the six-speed auto. The two work well together to get you moving, although the engine is the noisiest installation I can remember. In the Peugeot 308, it's virtually silent.

On the move, the lovely ride also impresses, soaking up the bumps (except those aggressive rubber speed humps in shopping centre car parks) while keeping body roll to an acceptable minimum.

It's perfectly fine in the suburbs, even with its limited power. Breaking into traffic can be a bit of a moment, but there are slower cars about.

Where the Aircross is really good is out on the freeway. It's quiet for such a small car and that torque figure makes joining the M4 freeway (west out of Sydney) fine, and it cheerfully kept up on the climb up the Blue Mountains and the brakes and transmission were great down the other side.

Citroen is unashamedly about comfort over handling, but the trade-off for the comfort is pretty good in that it still handles despite a plush ride and being up on stilts.

The Leapmotor B10 was developed with testing at Stellantis’ European proving ground in Italy. This is because despite Leapmotor being its own brand within China, its international operations are a joint-venture between itself and Stellantis.

There are some on-paper shreds of evidence for this, a rear-wheel drive layout and a claimed 50/50 weight distribution help, but get the B10 on the road and it’s clear this isn’t a car that’s relying entirely on price, a long list of features and some showroom shine to sell.

After the initial familiarisation that comes with many new electric cars, particularly from China, the Leapmotor B10 becomes easy to settle into a rhythm with, especially if you turn off some of its more intrusive ADAS features like lane-keep, driver monitoring and speed limit warning. The latter can sometimes get a limit wrong, and though the B10’s chimes aren’t audibly overbearing, they are persistent.

While the B10 doesn’t excel in any areas on the road, it doesn’t fall down significantly in any either.

Its suspension soaks up bumps relatively well, and despite some vibrations on rougher roads the B10 is pretty comfortable. The tyres it rides on as standard, however, are rather noisy, so if there’s an opportunity to swap out the Linglong defaults to something better, we’d advise it.

The tyres also squeal rather quickly when cornering, not necessarily because the B10 is about to let go, but just because the weight of the car appears to be pushing on the front outside tyre in cornering.

The B10 holds up better than\ a family car really needs to in dynamic driving, but we wouldn’t be doing mountain runs or track days in one. 

There’s a little body roll in corners, but not nearly as much as has been in other models riding on the apparently soft suspension preferred in China.

The steering, braking and acceleration all have a mild vagueness to them, but once you’re honed in they’re all predictable. The steering can be adjusted for weight, and its lightest setting is too light, while the acceleration feels lethargic in its lowest setting and too aggressive in its highest.

There’s not a lot of regenerative braking strength, but it’s enough to help regulate speed once you’re used to how mildly it comes in - again, depending on your preferences and settings.

The good news here is that the B10 is easy to drive, and only very serious road bumps on fast corners unsettled it on test - the kind you’d expect to upset any car.

The Leapmotor B10 was bestowed a five-star ANCAP rating in early February 2026 under the body’s most recent criteria.

There are seven airbags, including an important centre airbag, plus the B10 boasts 17 ADAS systems with 12 cameras and sensors helping monitor the road, surroundings and the driver.

As mentioned, those systems can be a little intrusive sometimes, but less than other new models from brands new to Australia.

The B10’s list of safety features includes multi-collision braking, collision sensors, an emergency data recorder, the aforementioned dashcam-style surround-view recording system, belt pretensioners, plus all the elements of the ADAS suite Leapmotor calls 'Leap Pilot'.

This includes adaptive cruise and lane centring, lane departure warning and emergency intervention, collision avoidance and warnings, blind-spot detection, rear cross-traffic alert and brake, speed assist, and driver monitoring and distracted driver warnings.

For baby capsules and child seats there are three top tethers across the second row with ISOFIX anchors on the two outer positions.

Citroen offers a class-competitive five-year/unlimited kilometre warranty with a five year service plan if you want to pre-pay.

That plan costs a stiff $2727 for your five visits (or every 12 months/15,000km). That's nearly three times what you'll pay for a C-HR or about $400 more than a Mazda CX-3.

The B10’s post-purchase prospects are generally solid, though Leapmotor’s six-year, 160,000km warranty is an area where it falls short of rivals which are offering longer, unlimited kilometre warranties.

The battery is covered for eight years or 180,000km, whichever comes first, which is pretty par for an EV.

Servicing is capped-price for the first eight years, with each service costing $370 on average. The eight-year span makes it pretty appealing, per 12-month interval or every 20,000km.

There are currently 20 dealers across the country, though more are coming, while Leapmotor also offers eight years of roadside service.