• Huge room for passengers
• Limbs prioritised over luggage
• The rear seats fold flat for more space

How much space is there?

Let’s not beat about the bush: the Leapmotor C10 is one of the roomiest family SUVs on the market. Its electric car platform is designed to create a generous passenger compartment and it’s this quality that shines brightest when you climb onboard (a move made especially easy thanks to the large door apertures that open wide for easy access).

Those up front will benefit from the roomy ambience, but it’s the rear-seat passengers who will be blown away. It’s cavernous back there – a really surprising, taxi-spec sense of roominess that should appeal to family buyers and those wanting generous rear accommodation. It’s helped by the flat rear floor; there is no transmission tunnel bisecting the floorpan and as a consequence there is ample room for feet and legs.

The feeling of airiness is exacerbated by the full-length glass sunroof: it pours light into the cabin and reinforces the sense of space onboard.

Leapmotor C10 boot space and storage

The C10 has seemingly prioritised space for limbs over luggage, however. The boot capacity is merely reasonable and nothing to write home about – it should be fine for most day-to-day family luggage requirements, but it’s far from challenging the class leaders. Outright loadspace stands at 435 litres – 34 less than a Kia EV3 and around 100 litres below a Renault Scenic E-Tech‘s boot.

Fold the rear seats down (they flop forwards to a flat position, despite the seat bolsters remaining fixed in position) and the boot extends to 1,410 litres. We did this for a tip run and were easily able to accommodate a serious amount of household waste, cardboard boxes and gubbins for a run to the council’s recycling centre.

If you need to tow, the 1,995kg Leapmotor C10 has a fair towing capacity: the payload stands at 750kg (unbraked) or 1,500kg for a braked trailer.

There are a few cubby holes and door pockets scattered around the cabin. One word of warning: the C10 has one of the smallest excuses of a glovebox we have encountered in a long time. The cubby in front of the passenger is so small, you might struggle to package just one pair of plump ski gloves!

Is it easy to park?

We found the Leapmotor C10 straightforward to park. The high standard equipment specification means that you get reversing cameras and sensors as standard and they give a decently sharp picture of the view behind the tailgate to help you manoeuvre into tight spaces.

Choose from a straightforward rear-facing camera or a 360-degree panoramic view, which is handy for that bird’s-eye view from above. This functionality works really well and we found the C10 an easy car to slot into spaces, considering its 4,739mm length.

The door mirrors tilt down automatically when you select reverse, which helps you avoid tapping precious alloy wheels into the kerb when reverse parking.

Safety

• A strong five-star crash test
• Strong array of driver safety kit
• Beeps and bongs may annoy though…

Should you be worried about owning a Chinese car from a safety perspective? The latest independent Euro NCAP crash test suggests you shouldn’t be: it scored an impressive five-star top ranking when it undertook laboratory tests.

It scored especially highly for adult occupant protection, scoring 89% and the children safety score wasn’t far behind at 85%. Thank the generous safety equipment, which includes a raft of active and passive features – designed to prevent you having a smash in the first place, and protecting you if the worst does happen, respectively.

There are three-point seatbelts for all five occupants and there are two ISOFIX child-seat latching points in the rear row. Seven airbags are scattered across the cabin to protect occupants in an impact, while electronics monitor your every move, beeping and intervening to keep you in lane, brake for you if you are about to strike an object and even warn if you’re about to open your door into traffic.

Just be warned that some of these beeps and bongs can be deeply annoying and many of our testers rated the Leapmotor among the most irritating driver assistance systems on the market. Thankfully, you can switch the worst offenders off – even if that does rather negate the safety benefits they bring…

Leapmotor has loaded the C10 with no fewer than 17 driver assistance functions, including autonomous emergency braking, blind spot monitoring, driver fatigue warning, lane assist and adaptive cruise control. But while these features look great in the brochure, they’re not the easiest to live with in the real world.

I’ve never been forced to stop by a car’s driver assistance technology, but the C10 broke me. I’d barely covered a mile before needing to pull over and disengage the driver attention and lane assist systems (which you can’t do while moving). The car chimed at me once every 10 seconds to alert me of the fact I was falling asleep, and it was convinced I kept straying into oncoming traffic.

The problem’s made even worse if you wear glasses, as the sensor in the A-pillar can’t read your eye movements properly. You then get a message on the dashboard that reads ‘driver invalid,’ which would be hilarious if it wasn’t accompanied by an orchestra of bongs. It’s deeply irritating. I hope Leapmotor can update it soon.