AUTOCAR ROAD TE8ST 57 7

GEELY EX5

Chinese giant makes its first move in the UK: an SUV to rival the MG S5 EV

Most of us have heard of Geely by now. It’s clearly a force to be reckoned with, having bought up a significant slice of the European automotive industry. Volvo, Polestar, Lotus, LEVC (which makes the TX taxi) and Smart are all owned, at least in part, by the Chinese giant. Zeekr and Lynk&Co, both of which are sold in continental Europe and may come to the UK at some point, are also Geely brands.

But like some reclusive billionaire with fingers in many pies, the Geely brand itself has so far been invisible in Europe. But that’s now changing, because the Geely brand plans to launch a range of its own cars over the next few years.

The company says it’s here to stay and therefore it intends to be represented in all of the key segments. Next year, we’ll see a C-segment plug-in hybrid SUV, an electric supermini hatchback and a plug-in hybrid seven-seat SUV. But things kick off with the EX5, a car in one of the fastest-growing classes of all: C-segment electric SUVs. Also in this class are the Skoda Elroq, Kia EV3, Renault Scenic and numerous others.

The EX5 is going straight into a full road test to demonstrate what the mothership has to offer.

DESIGN & ENGINEERING

★★★☆☆

PROS Inoffensive looks; LFP battery; potential for other versions

CONS Very bland and forgettable; not particularly innovative

We would normally dispute the popular assertion that all electric crossovers look the same, but the Geely EX5 is not helping to disprove that notion. It really does look incredibly generic. It provides all the default 2025 design cues, with a rear light bar that looks vaguely like a petrol Porsche Macan’s, flush door handles, bi-colour aero wheels and a smooth, grille-less front. It’s supposedly inspired by Song-dynasty porcelain, but we’re not seeing it. The upside of the featureless design is a creditably slippery drag coefficient of 0.27.

Given the corporate connection with Volvo, one might assume that the EX5 sits on a shared platform, but instead it uses Geely’s own, and presumably lower-cost, Global Intelligent New Energy Architecture, or GEA (yes, there do seem to be a few letters missing from that initialism). After all, Geely isn’t new to producing cars itself. It has been doing it since 1997 and sold more than two million Geely-branded cars in 2024.