Chinese Cars: Leapmotor Sets Out to Conquer France
This page is translated from the original post "Voitures chinoises : Leapmotor part à la conquête de la France" in French.
- 23/09/2022 11:30
Leapmotor’s offensive will begin with an electric city car, which should offer an appealing price/performance ratio.
Leapmotor, a Chinese startup founded in 2015, has just announced its arrival in France. Initially, the company will sell the T03, a electric city car measuring 3.62 meters in length. This model will be launched in the last quarter of 2022.
Comparable in size to the Dacia Spring, the Leapmotor T03 will feature a larger battery than its counterpart (41.3 kWh vs 27.4 kWh), ensuring better range. The T03 has been homologated at 280 km in WLTP cycle, which is 50 km more than the Spring.
Equipped with an electric motor of 109 hp, the Leapmotor T03 is also more powerful than the Franco-Romanian city car, which is limited to 44 hp. But these figures, even promising, do not guarantee that the car will meet European standards. We will soon be able to tell you what the T03 is really worth, as we have planned to test it very soon.
The price will, of course, be a crucial factor. For now, Leapmotor has not disclosed it, but it seems that the goal is to sell the T03 around €20,000, after incentives. On this point, Dacia does much better. But the Chinese city car is likely to be better equipped and more refined.
A city car to start, then an SUV?
Later, Leapmotor could add the C11 to its catalog, a large SUV measuring 4.75 meters. This powerful vehicle (around 540 hp) promises up to 610 km of range, according to Chinese homologation standards. In China, it complements a lineup consisting of the T03, a large sedan C01, and a small coupe S01. All these vehicles are electric.
Leapmotor will be distributed by a subsidiary of the SN Diffusion group, which already manages the Seres network. It aims to have around fifty sales points by the end of the year, then one hundred by 2023.
In China, Leapmotor has been selling cars since 2019. Over the first seven months of 2022, its sales jumped by 177%, reaching 64,038 units.
Read also: Test Seres 3: Driving the Chinese electric SUV
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