Leapmotor’s first proper swing at the Kiwi hatchback market pairs a genuinely engaging RWD chassis and class-leading range with a touchscreen-happy interior that occasionally beeps at you into submission.
They say every great journey begins with a single leap, and when it comes to backing a car brand most Kiwis have never heard of with real money, you’d want that leap to land somewhere soft. The brand’s newest arrival to touch down on our shores goes by the name B05, and although it’s a BEV, this Leapmotor is looking to grab a share of a tried and trusted segment – the hatchback.
Leapmotor NZ let me spend a week with the B05, in what I’m told was the Design-spec car, complete with the larger of the two available battery packs. But whether you end up in this variant or the entry Life trim, the B05 wears its styling with the same restrained confidence right across the range. There are 5 colour options available and my model was dressed in ‘Lighting Yellow’ which if I’m honest, I would have preferred to have been more vibrant.
On that, nose-on, the B05 doesn’t shout. There’s no oversized grille theatre here (there’s barely a grille needed at all, being an EV), just a smooth, closed-off front clip, slim LED headlights and a bumper design that clearly prioritises aerodynamics over attitude.
In profile it reads as a proper (albeit large) hatchback, and I mean that as a compliment, because in a market drowning in crossovers and faux-SUVs, a car that’s happy to just be a hatch is becoming something of a novelty in itself. The wheelbase is notably long for the car’s footprint, which pays real dividends once you’re sitting in the back seat (more on that shortly), while the rear gets tidy LED tail lights and a modest roofline spoiler. Nothing here is flashy, nothing is offensive, it’s conservative styling through and through. Some will call it handsome, others will wish Leapmotor had taken a few more risks.
Under the metaphorical bonnet sits a single rear-mounted electric motor producing 160kW, which is a genuinely healthy amount of shove for a car in this segment and price bracket. The rear-wheel drive is the interesting bit though, it’s unusual at this end of the market, where front-drive is the default for cost reasons, and it gives the B05 a more engaging engineering foundation than most rivals can claim, even if Leapmotor hasn’t chased outright hot-hatch performance with it.
Buyers choose between a 56.2kWh battery on the Life trim or the larger 67.1kWh pack fitted to my test car’s Design trim, the latter offering a WLTP range in the vicinity of 480km – genuinely excellent for the money. DC fast charging tops out around 168-174kW and there’s 11kW AC charging on board too, both strong numbers for this class, meaning the B05 shouldn’t leave you stranded at a charger any longer than necessary.
Inside is where the B05 quietly punches above its price tag. Materials, fit and finish all feel like they belong in a more expensive car, and that long wheelbase translates into properly usable rear legroom, this is not a hatchback where adults in the back are counting down the kilometres.
The boot is adequate rather than outstanding, so don’t expect to be swallowing flat-pack furniture, but for the weekly shop and the school bags it does the job without complaint. Where the B05 loses me a little is the interface, too many functions, from mirror adjustment to basic climate settings, live inside the touchscreen with too few physical buttons left over, which means simple tasks require a poke and a scroll rather than a reach and a click. Old dog, new tricks, and all that.
Admittedly, my time with the B05 was spent confined to the usual Auckland grind, but the bigger-battery gave me the confidence that should I have needed to venture out of town, I could have (without sweating over the charge percentage).
Anyway, the ride is surprisingly polished and composed, soaking up the local tarmac without fuss. The steering is accurate enough to place the car exactly where you want it, though it’s not what I’d call chatty, there’s not a lot of feedback coming back up the column, so while the B05 is genuinely quick in a straight line, it doesn’t quite ask to be driven hard through a set of corners.
The bigger irritant, and it built up over the week rather than hitting all at once, was the driver assistance suite. The lane-keeping and various warnings are overactive, correcting and beeping at inputs that didn’t need correcting, and after a few days I’d developed a genuine flinch every time I drifted anywhere near a white line. It’s the sort of thing that’s easy to tune out on a quick test drive but wears thin fast once you’re living with it.
Tarmac Takeaway
Pricing for New Zealand sits at $43,990 for the Life trim and $47,990 for the Design, and that extra $4,000 for the bigger battery and its near-480km range is money well spent if you’re doing regular runs beyond the city limits.
But either way, on the numbers that matter, the RWD layout, the range, the charging speed and an interior that punches above its price, this is a genuinely comfortable, reasonably quick and spacious electric hatchback for under $48k. Just be prepared for a car that beeps at you rather more than it should.
Oh and as a footnote, there’s no towing rating (do hatches tow anyway?), however the Leapmotor B05 has achieved a 5-star ANCAP safety rating under the tougher 2026–2028 assessment criteria, so in terms of safety, a leap of faith is not required.
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