Every Chinese Car In The UK… RATED!

Chinese cars tend to make headlines for all the wrong reasons, whether in the UK, EU or USA. But have we been through this cycle before with imported cars from Asia? What actually constitutes a ‘Chinese car’ (hint: it’s complicated)? And which ones are good and which are bad? Here are some answers…

🎤 Tom Ford

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00:00 Introduction
00:32 Complicated Family Trees
7:35 Testing, Testing
8:20 MG Cyberster
10:13 Superminis Galore
12:56 Skywell BE11
15:00 Is Lotus Chinese?
17:20 Xpeng G6
19:15 Omoda 5
22:00 Are They Watching You?
22:18 Conclusion

These are all the Chinese cars
on sale in the UK right now. Well, almost all. OK, almost all the Chinese cars
on sale in the UK right now. But this is a complicated thing when it comes to Chinese
manufacturers in the UK. So today, we’re going to try
and demystify it a bit. [Ollie] So we’ll look at the
family tree of who owns what… Geely… And Geely… By Geely. Do important in scientific testing. [Ollie] And figure out the best
and worst of the whole set. Right, let’s start with one
you might have heard of – BYD, Build Your Dreams. It’s the world’s largest
manufacturer of electric vehicles, and last year sold $100bn worth of vehicles, mostly in China. Did you know,
it’s actually bigger than Tesla? And it’s one of those companies.
It started making batteries for smartphones, but now mines the minerals,
makes the batteries and then builds the cars
to put the batteries into. Complete raw materials to finished product. Vertical integration, it’s called. And it makes it a solid bet. And it is expanding, as we can see here. It has five cars in the UK market right now. But can you name them?! I am going to have a go. This little supermini thing is the Dolphin. Yes. – Then we’ve got the Seal.
– Yes. What’s your marine theme? That’s called an Atto 3. I think that’s a sea urchin. Then there’s two more down here as well. Come and have a look. So what’s that? – Um…
– Come on! Quickly! Sealion 7. Because it’s got a green bit on the
number plate, therefore that is all-electric. So what’s that one, though? That then is the Seal U DM-i. And that’s a plug-in hybrid,
so not electric. Yeah, but I think it’s very similar to this one. But do you know how long BYD
has actually been in the UK market? – About 18 months, isn’t it?
– It’s nothing. And they’ve already got five cars here. Anyway, what about these two? Now these are by a company called GWM… You say “these”, I only see this. Right. There should be there,
a car called a… Help me out here. GWM… [Both] ..Haval Jolion Pro Ultra. Which is their plug-in hybrid. But unfortunately, that died this
morning in the car park over there and we’re still trying to fix it. – Ah, OK.
– So hopefully, we’ll have that later. Right. This thing, I recognise, though.
This is the Funky Cat. No, it’s been renamed. It’s now the 03 GT. Pure-electric supermini. One of the very few in the market,
but actually quite a nice little car. This is more challenging-looking. It’s the Leapmotor.
Now, Leapmotor, if I’ve got this right, is Chinese but it’s a partnership with Stellantis, the same people who bring you
Peugeots, Citroëns, Fiats, Jeeps and stuff. So you can go into a Stellantis dealership
and buy a Leapmotor. What are we looking at? Yeah, well, this is the T03 supermini. It’s the cheapest car we’ve got here. It’s just under £16,000. Pure electric. And then that is the C10 SUV. [Ollie] Which is actually not
a bad-looking car, I don’t think. Quite tight shutlines and stuff. This thing is a lot more generic, though. [Tom] So these are the cars that
you really might not have heard of. This is called a Skywell BE11, and it’s produced by a
company that’s called Skyworth. [Ollie] Right then. Over here,
we have the Omoda 5, which is made by Chery,
the fourth biggest carmaker in China. That’s interesting because
this is the Jaecoo J7 SHS, which is also made by Chery, but it’s supposed to be a little bit posher, so they give it a completely different name. This is a plug-in hybrid and you can
get up to 650 miles of range out of it. This is getting quite complicated.
– It is. It is. This one is the Xpeng G6. Now, it’s sort of a Tesla Model Y-y shaped
coupé SUV electric thing. It’s not a bad-looking car,
from some angles. [Tom] I actually think you’re going
to start hearing more about Xpeng. They’re big players in other markets and
they are invading the UK quite quickly. They are. Its full name…
– Right! I thought you’d have to do this! Because full name is… Come on, pronunciation! Oh, God. I apologise for this in advance. The Guangzhou Xiaopeng
Motors Technology Company Ltd. Shortened to Xpeng. I’m quite glad about that.
– Yeah, I bet you are. The thing is,
this is already quite complex, right? You would agree? Well, it’s going to get worse. Because there are family trees at play. And on that, I’m going to take
you round this side, past the Xpeng and a pair of the BYDs, back towards Smart. Now, you might remember
Smart as a Mercedes brand and, sure enough, Mercedes still owns 50%. The other 50% is owned by a giant
Chinese corporation called Geely. And they have this range,
with more on the way – the #1 and the #3. And you don’t have to say the hashtag. And I’d far rather you didn’t. Anyway, they’re not bad cars,
but as you can see, the waters are getting slightly muddy here, where you’ve got this question of
when is a Chinese car not a Chinese car? And with that, over to Wook. You see, that’s the thing. People seem to think that
Chinese cars are on the way. Well, actually, they’re already here. This Volvo EX90, for instance, is a car
that’s developed and designed in Europe, but actually built in Chengdu in China.
And South Carolina in America. But that’s because it’s owned by the same
company that owns the Smarts – Geely. And Geely actually has lots of other brands. So it means that Polestar is also Chinese. And you remember those new London
black cabs? They’re Geelys as well. Now, Geely also has two other brands in China – Lynk & Co and a company called Zeekr. And they’re not bringing them over here just yet because they might sweep sales away
from their more Eurocentric brand. Here we have a Mini, the most
British brand imaginable, you’d think. You would assume this was built at Cowley
with the combustion-engine cars. But no. Electric Minis are built in China, in a co-production with GWM back up there. And as for Lotus, that last bastion
of Englishness, well, it really isn’t. Both the Emeya and the Eletre
were launched in China over a year before they were in the UK. And the company itself is owned, again,
by Geely, and a Malaysian holding company. These cars might be engineered in Germany,
but they’re built in Wuhan. [Ollie] So that’s a British car that’s actually
a Chinese car pretending to be British. That can’t be common, right? Well, let’s move on and talk about MG. Now, MG initially refused to lend us cars, insisting they were a British brand. But it’s owned by SAIC,
a giant Chinese conglomerate, and its entire range is
engineered and built in China. MG eventually relented,
which made us happy, as it’s the most established Chinese brand here, selling cars since 2011, and was the UK’s 10th best-selling brand last year, shifting over 80,000 cars, which was more than Vauxhall, Skoda,
Peugeot, Renault, Tesla, Land Rover and so on. The MG4 is a standout
and would have done well here, but the only car we were able
to get hold of was the Cyberster. This MG Cyberster is actually the only
pure-electric roadster on sale, bar none. [Ollie] Which means it beat the electric
Porsche Boxster to market by well over a year. So now all we have to do
is rigorously test all of these cars and pick a few favourites, right? Indeed. And look – the Haval is back. It’s in with a chance. Time for a montage! So what we did over the course of
two days on a private test track was drive every single Chinese car in our group. We had a look at exterior styling, interiors, equipment, pricing and handling. And whatever Ollie is doing testing that. We checked their performance, poked, prodded and generally got a feel from what
China is sending our way for the UK. And the results were, er, mixed. But some of them stood out
more than the others. The MG Cyberster, currently the only
pure-electric roadster on the market. And do you know what? I drove one of these last year in China
and I absolutely loved it. And now it’s hit the UK. And this version, which is the
rear-wheel-drive-only version with 330, 340bhp, is just under £55,000,
which feels like great value. It isn’t a roadster for people
who like sports cars, because it’s a bit too soft for that. It’s a bit too relaxed. But I’ll tell you what, it’s almost like
a completely different experience. I got in this the other day, put the roof down on a nice summer’s day and was just toddling around
at seven-tenths speed and it was genuinely really, really pleasant. The problem I have with this car, however, is that when I drove this car in China, it had some fantastic screens,
but they looked a bit mental. The graphics were almost too much. It was like a movie. The ones we’ve got in the UK have
graphics that look like 8-bit Gameboys. They’re fussy. They’re overcomplicated. And in China, they get a version of
this car with a yoke steering wheel. And with a full wheel like this,
it cuts off parts of the screen. So it just feels like it’s
not been thought through. I was trying to open this little
drawer pocket here earlier on and… ..it fell off. That’s not good, is it? You can see where Porsche might be able
to make a better version of this car. But for now – and for 55 grand – I actually think this is quite solid. Even if bits are slightly falling off. I just wish that the one that we’ve got in Europe doesn’t feel cheaper and worse
than the one they get in China. Come on, China! Give us the full package! These four supermini-shaped
cars are not direct rivals. Instead, what you’re looking at
here, in a way, is the tip of the iceberg. You see, in the UK we get to choose
from about 57 different car brands, from Caterham to Toyota. In China three years ago,
there were 652 car companies. You see, what had happened was
the Chinese government had funded them to get them all off the ground
and then let them fight it out. The failure rate has been savage. Today, only 150 are left. So what you’re looking at here is the survivors, the ones that made it,
the cream of the crop. Shall we start with the Leapmotor? £15,995. And it comes with the full suite of screens.
Got two of those. Steering interference, it does that. There’s even a sunroof in this one. And plenty of bonging too. But the motor whine and everything else. And just alongside something like a Dacia Spring, it just comes along as a bit joyless
and completely uninspired. Look, if you really want a cheap electric car, you’ve seen what’s going on with residuals. Buy second-hand. Or you could buy one of these. Yes. It’s £32,000, twice the price, but it’s more in tune with our tastes
than almost any other car here. You can tell Mercedes is still involved. Yeah, it does look like it’s wearing a toupée and the cabin is a bit twee, but this is a well-packaged and competent car. It’s easy to get on with. The screens are good. And do you know what?
It drives pretty slickly too. The GWM Ora and BYD Dolphin are
both heartland Chinese superminis. Both have 170hp electric powertrains and both cost within a whisker of 25 grand. And a couple of years ago, that was good value and you’d forgive their curious idiosyncrasies. Because this GWM isn’t nearly
as sporty as its body kit suggests, and the BYD Dolphin isn’t nearly as interesting
as its two-tone paint and wheels seem to say. But now why have one of these –
cars we rate at five or six out of 10 – when for the same money you could have Renault’s new excellent, nine-out-of-10 5? Or, for £5,000 less, Fiat’s cracking new Grande Panda? [Tom] This is the Skywell BE11 mid-sized SUV. Now, it’s a joint venture
between Skyworth Electronics and the Nanjing Golden Dragon Bus Company. And it is… possibly the most boring car
I think I’ve ever driven. It is visual Valium. I couldn’t pick this thing out in a line-up. But the basics are actually quite attractive. It comes in standard or long-range versions, to give you 250 to 300-ish miles of range. It costs £36,995. But still, I’m not sure I’d find it in a car park. And then, you start digging into the detail, right? You start looking at it thinking,
maybe it’s not that bad. And then you realise it’s got three
Giti Control P10 tyres on it and one random Bridgestone Turanza! This is the press car. This is supposed to be
as best as it can be. And then when you get in it, it doesn’t get much better. Things seem all right. And then you hit a pothole… ..or a small bump, and you notice that the primary ride,
the initial ride, is terrible. The steering… ..feels like a dodgem. It’s got no feeling. It’s not connected to anything. It feels like it’s done by telephone line. The brake pedal is the springiest, weirdest thing. And it’s got like 3.5in of travel
before it does anything. And then you start playing with the touchscreen, and the buttons are all too small and the
ride is so bad that you can’t find anything. And the logic trees, the way it
works out what you might need to find, are bonkers. And do you know the weirdest thing? If you do a tight turn
or you pull out of a junction smartly and you have to put your foot down a bit… (WHEELS SPIN) ..can you hear it wheel-spinning? The traction control basically doesn’t. This is genuinely not a very good car. Chinese cars are currently the big disruptors
in the global automotive market. Last year, China built 27 million cars, of which 750,000 came to Europe. In the last three years, Chinese EV imports have gone from 3% of the
European market to 20, although that includes cars
made in China by European brands. So how fair is it to call the
Eletre and Emeya Chinese? Well, perfectly. Lotus is owned by a Chinese company
and the cars are built in China. But why should nationality matter? Plenty of cars are built in Mexico and Turkey. We don’t care about that. And plenty of brands are owned internationally. Land Rover is Indian, for example. Surely what matters most is that
these cars still drive like Lotuses. So let’s go and find out. You can debate all you like about whether Lotus should be building big,
2.5-tonne electric saloons. But provided you can get on board
with that, this feels like a Lotus. I mean, look at it in here. The touchpoints are really hard and tactile, and the paddles for the driving modes
and things, it’s all really accessible. And the design, it doesn’t look heavy. In fact, it feels sportier in here than a BMW M5. And outside, well, it looks like it should
be wearing a Lamborghini badge. Body control is really good
and, look, it a corners flat as anything. This Emeya R has over 900hp,
so it is so fast. And the steering… I mean, this is an electric car
with real tactility through the steering. It’s got good feedback and feel. Look, it’s not perfect. The diffs pull at it slightly under acceleration,
which can be a little unsettling. And the ride occasionally
gets this sort of diagonal porpoising. It’s worse in the Eletre, though. But look, above all,
we wanted Lotus to have a future. And this might not be the future
that we envisioned for it, but Chinese money is keeping it alive. This is the Xpeng G6 coupé. Although it is not a coupé
because it does have rear doors… ..and quite generous rear seating. In the UK, we’ll be getting two battery
sizes, both standard and long-range, and only rear-wheel drive. Although you can get four-wheel drive
versions in other markets. But what I wanted to ask you here was,
does this remind you of anything? Anything at all? Because it reminds me
very heavily of the Tesla Model Y. It’s essentially a copy. And then when you get on the inside,
it’s much more of the same. So it is essentially, and quite eerily,
a Tesla clone. Even the materials, the design,
the fonts on the screen are pretty much exactly the same as a Tesla. The gear selector is exactly the same
as an old Tesla Model Y. This feels like a very mature, grown-up car, so the damping is actually quite good. There’s some real bad potholes
going down here and some bumpy bits. And where some of the other Chinese cars
are really smashing through them, this just goes gudunk-gudunk. I mean, you can hear it but it’s not going all the way
through to the structure of the car. I’ll put it through
a big pothole here. Listen. (MUFFLED THUD) You can feel it, but it’s pretty good. And that damping makes the car
feel more grown-up. The weird thing is, it’s still slightly
sharp through the steering, like it’s trying to be sporty. I’ll just go through a little chicane here. It’s trying to feel sporty
and it’s still got some body roll, but it’s reliable and progressive,
so it feels like a proper car. These are the real threats from China. The cars that are well-worked,
they’re well-made, they’ve got loads of kit
and they’re well-priced. The legacy manufacturers in Europe
have to watch stuff like Xpeng, because these are the ones
that are going to eat their dinner. OK, the Omoda 5. You can have it as a petrol hybrid like this,
or an all-electric version. Both have around 200hp. The electric one is 33k,
this petrol hybrid just 25 grand. And that sounds like conspicuously
good value for money, provided, that is, you can cope with this grille. Anyway, there is a reason why it’s good value. Amongst other things,
as well as it being built in China, you’ll have heard a lot
about this word recently – tariffs. In Europe, they charge import duty for
Chinese brands bringing their cars in. In the UK, we don’t. And that’s why you’re getting
so many Chinese brands bringing their wares
to the UK at the moment. Wares like this Omoda 5
terribly generic crossover. And then we get to the driving. And let’s just say, I’ve driven better. So put it into drive, OK. I can let the handbrake off. But it surges off the line. Its throttle response is trying to be too busy. It feels like a CVT,
like it’s just running away with itself. But it’s not. It’s got a seven-speed dual clutch. And I’ve got no idea why it
would bother to have that. Everything about this car, they have said
it’s all designed for city and urban driving. And yes, the steering is very, very light. If you keep it under 30mph,
you’ll be fine. If you go over 30mph… I tell you what, there’s not many cars these days that show so little signs of having
had any development done on them. But the engine noise, the throttle
response, the steering’s lack of fear. Look at the blimmin’ roll in it
and I’m not doing anything aggressive. It’s absolutely hilarious. It just doesn’t feel like…
(BONG) Oh, hello. And then it
chimes up and gets involved. I’m sorry, I’m being nasty about you
because you’re not a very good car. [Automated voice] Sorry. Again? [Ollie] I said you’re a terrible car! There is zero steering feel.
There is zero brake bite. It sort of surfs on.
At least the pedal doesn’t travel too far. The throttle just seems vague
and a bit disconnected. But mainly, it’s this appalling body control. If you do try and do anything too extreme… I haven’t turned the traction control off. I haven’t done anything else.
I’ve left all the safety systems on. But it just cannot keep control of itself. The temptation is to think that China
just produces cheap cars, but it doesn’t. We’ve got some good cars here today. This isn’t one of them. We also asked all the brands
if their cars can spy on us and what data they hold on owners. And unsurprisingly, they all said they comply
with all existing GDPR rules and regulations. Unfortunately, our testing does not extend
to ploughing into lines of software code. So, Ollie, we’ve spent two days
testing a lot of Chinese cars. Well, every one… almost every one
that’s available in the UK. And where are we at? We have boiled it down to eight cars. Not because they’re the eight best, but because they tell
interesting sides of the story, I think. The two that I wanted to pick out were these two. So that’s the Leapmotor T03 and the
MG Cyberster, because they’re quite niche. And when China does an early niche,
it’s quite exciting, isn’t it? It’s quite good because what I think you expect
is for everything to just be an electric crossover. And these two aren’t and they’re pretty OK. But they don’t do everything well, do they? No, they don’t. Shall we come over here? (TOM LAUGHS) The Haval – look at the gaps for the…
Why are the wheels set in so far? And why does it need aero flicks down here? Honestly, it’s just a horrible driving experience. There’s very few redeeming features. It’s the most disappointing car
I’ve driven in a long time. Although there were a couple
of close contenders, weren’t there? – Yeah. I mean, for me, the Skywell…
– Yep. Mismatched tyres aside, it has a problem that all of the control
surfaces don’t seem to talk to each other. So the brakes are terrible, the steering is like a dodgem
and everything just feels a bit loose. It just doesn’t have any coherence. And it’s expensive for what it is,
which is really annoying. [Ollie] I know. [Tom] The thing is, China does know how to do it. Because if you think about BYD, this is a massive Chinese company. [Ollie] Yeah, four million car sales a year. Well, they’ve come to
the UK market in 18 months and delivered five different cars
and they’re fine. They’re not excellent,
they’re not showstopping, but they work and they’re well-priced
and well-specced. I will say, the Dolphin and the Atto 3,
the two cheaper cars, feel like they’re a generation back. But the Seal, the Sealion 7 and
the Seal U DM or whatever, are all, as you say, fine. They do the job. This, however, I think, feels like a notch above, even though it is a complete knock-off of a Tesla. Xpeng G6 is basically a Model Y, but it came out before the new Model Y. So who’s copying who’s homework? – Yeah!
– I mean, they’re well-damped, they’re well-specced, they’re under 40 grand. They’re only a couple of grand
more than the terrible cars. So why would you have a terrible one
when you can have a Chinese car that is really actually quite good value? Exactly. Exactly. But it’s not our favourite car here, is it? No. [Ollie] No, because if we come over here,
the cars that really appeal to us maybe aren’t completely Chinese. – This is unsurprising, isn’t it?
– Yes! So what have we got here?
We’ve got a Lotus Eletre… And a Smart 3. And you could have put the
Smart 1 in here just almost as easily. Although I quite like the beige
and the coupé-ish roofline on this. Because they’ve both got European content. And I think it just shows that there’s
still some content coming from European partnerships with Chinese companies that are giving us really quite decent cars. So it’s not the fact it’s £100,000? That I love it? No. Well, in a way. But, no, I think that is… That Lotus Eletre, I know people have been
sniffy about it because it’s a 2.5-tonne Lotus, but for the job it does, it does it really well. And it’s just a question of market. Can they find an audience for it? And I think that things like the Smart
feel like they know their market better. So some of the new brands from China don’t feel like they’ve quite nailed
what we want as Europeans, whereas Smart has all that input
from Germany, suddenly it feels all right. The weird thing is like if you think that five years
ago we were looking at Kia and Hyundai and thinking, “Ooh, they’ve got funny names.” They are now the accepted class leaders. Exactly. And it is also that rate of development. The Koreans have developed so fast. But the Chinese have literally taken
that timescale and cut it in half. So the cars that we are saying are rubbish now… We were making jokes about Hyundai, weren’t we? But the cars that are rubbish now
are not going to be rubbish in a handful of years. They’re going to be class leaders. That’s something we’re going to have to watch for. And I think “Made in China” is going
to mean something entirely different. Um, it’s weird, but people say
that Chinese cars are on the way. They’re not. They’re already here.