Leapmotor C10 2026 review: Design REEV long-term | Part 1

The Leapmotor C10 REEV has entered the Chesto family garage, and it’s a model I’m pretty interested in. Well, its powertrain specifically. And that’s because I suspect I’m a lot like most of you; all aboard the EV train, right up until we find ourselves too far from the bright lights of the city.

See, an EV mostly makes perfect sense for our little urban family, and when I have one through the garage I generally charge it once a week, if that. The suburbs are an EV’s best friend, and we can take seemingly limitless short hops before needing to top up.

I say ‘mostly’, because (and this is just a hard fact of EV ownership, so don’t shoot the messenger in the comments) they are indisputably more annoying than their ICE-powered counterparts on really long trips.

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We duck off down the NSW South Coast every now and again – about 2.5 hours from our place in Sydney – and it’s on these adventures that I sometimes forget the ease of EV life in the city and begin cursing the lack of regional charging infrastructure, and pondering why my wife doesn’t enjoy spending her holidays sipping bad coffee in a service station forecourt while we wait to top up.

The C10 REEV, though, promises to fix that. I’ve got the fancy Design variant (currently $47,990, drive-away, but usually $47,888, before on-road costs). And the REEV bit — or Range Extender Electric Vehicle — refers to the fact its rear-mounted electric motor is supplemented by a 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine that acts as a mobile power generator for the C10’s 28.4kWh lithium iron phosphate battery.

In simple terms, it drives like an EV, but when charge is low the engine kicks in to provide power to the battery. I have driven my C10 with a near-flat battery, and it keeps moving – albeit very gingerly at first as the battery recharges. And I’ve driven it with no fuel, surviving just on battery power. And both work, suggesting it really does offer a pretty comprehensive safety net for those motoring incompetents like myself who insist, against all odds, that we’ll make it to the next fuel station/public charger before we run out of juice.

Leapmotor reckons that, with battery and tank topped up, you can expect a combined driving range of 1150km, albeit according to the more lenient NEDC testing protocol. Still, my car has promised a range of about 1000km via its on-board computer.

There is a catch, though, and that is that you need to treat it like an EV and keep it topped up, because otherwise you’ll be using a lot of fuel. My test car’s on-board computer says over the last 2613km the REEV has averaged 7.3L/100km of fuel, which is worse than a good conventional hybrid. Get real lazy with the electrons and things are tougher still — I’ve seen 12.3L/100km pop up, which is almost dual-cab ute country.

Still, the Leapmotor shouldn’t be punished for its owner’s laziness. It says EV in the title, so plug it in judiciously and you should see those numbers plummet, which is exactly what I’m doing from here out, so stay tuned for the next dispatch.

What Leapmotor should be punished for, though, is the worst keyless entry system I have ever encountered. Mostly because it’s not keyless, and you can barely enter.

2026 Leapmotor C10 REEV (Image: Andrew Chesterton)

The brand provides a credit-card-style fob which has no buttons. Easy enough, you think, because the proximity lock and unlock must be flawless. Um, nope. It doesn’t have that. Instead, you need to hold the card against a small square on the driver’s mirror to unlock the car as well as lock and switch off the vehicle. I discovered the latter when I got a call from my neighbour at 10pm asking me why my car was lighting up the street like a UFO landing.

Now, to fully understand my hatred of this system, you need to know a little more about my life. We have a 14-month-old son, and so my relationship with Woolworths and Chemist Warehouse is at VIP level. And when we get back from the shops, I need to grab my son from his seat, grab the groceries from the boot, then carry both to the driver's door, dig around in my pocket for the card, and then lock the door. And then the same in reverse when we try to leave the house. It would be tricky if I had three arms, and it's near impossible with just the two I've got.

Happily, Leapmotor does have an app that you will be downloading immediately, allowing you to lock and unlock the car remotely, as well as pre-cool the cabin.

With all of that sorted, the C10 REEV has slipped pretty comfortably into our family life. There’s enough backseat space to comfortably fit my son’s baby seat, and the boot will swallow a pram with space to spare for shopping and all the other stuff we now require.

So far on the road the Leapmotor has proven pretty easy living, too, with the power (158kW, down slightly on the all-EV version of the C10) ample for getting up and moving. Comfort over athletic capability is the order of the day, though, with some floatiness to the ride. The brake pedal also takes some getting used to. Presumably there’s some internal tussle over how the regenerative braking should respond to my foot, but the pedal can at times feel worryingly spongy, then overly grabby.

But I think I’ve now got the getting-to-know-you stuff in hand, so we push on into month two to see how this relationship develops. And it could be important – if I make my wife sit by a dusty charger somewhere too many more times, it might well be my only relationship.

Acquired: January 2026

Distance travelled this month: 650km

Odometer: 2613km

Average fuel consumption this month: 7.3L/100km