Is China's bestselling car any good in the UK?

It's hard to keep pace with the slew of launches of new brands in the UK, but Geely (whose parent company owns the likes of Volvo, Polestar and Lotus) has just embarked on its second launch here in less than a year, with several more to come.

Its first car (the EX5) was a mid-sized SUV,  and Geely has now followed it up with a small hatchback: the EX2.

Priced at a maximum £10,000 equivalent in China (where it's known as the Xingyuan), it was the country's bestselling car in 2025, with over 450,000 vehicles sold. 

Alas, for reasons including not being eligible for the UK's electric car grant and import duty, the EX2 isn't so cheap here. UK prices start at just under £21,000, meaning it's beaten in price by numerous small EVs such as the Citroën e-C3, which starts around £1,000 cheaper.

However, the EX2's price is still attractive, especially when you consider its eight-year warranty (another big play that several Chinese brands are making) and the kit included as standard.

With the recent demise of Chinese brand Skywell in the UK, some may be suspicious of new-to-the-UK brands and whether they're likely to even be in existence to honour such a warranty.

For its part, Geely Auto is operating in the UK rather than via an importer (which is the part of the Skywell operation that failed) and already had 55 dealers in the UK at the end of 2025.

While this doesn't guarantee anything, it's the sort of signs to look for before choosing to commit to a car from an unfamiliar brand.

Read our guide on Chinese cars for more on what to look for.

Plenty of kit

Typical of cars from new-to-the-UK Chinese brands, the EX2 majors on tech and the promise of passenger space and comfort (more on that later).

Even the confusingly-named ‘Pro’ trim level (which is actually the most basic) comes loaded with handy features including keyless entry, seven airbags, electrically adjustable front seats, adaptive cruise control, a reversing camera and a 14.6-inch central display with wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. 

The small battery on Pro models has an official electric range of 156 miles. You’ll get even less than that on motorway-heavy journey; this is not a car for those who travel long distances regularly.

Mid-range ‘Max’ models come at a £2,500 premium and have a bigger battery and more powerful motor for a claimed range of 214 miles, while top-spec ‘Ultra’ adds heated seats, electric bootlid, upgraded speakers and a 360-degree parking camera system. Ultra models cost £25,490 (£2,000 more than Max). 

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Space innovator

The EX2 is a very spacious car, which is especially impressive given its compact dimensions.

There’s a vast amount of head and leg room in both the front and back of the car; I could comfortably sit behind a driver my size (I’m 6ft 1in tall). Very few people will have cause for complaint about the amount of space in the back. 

For what is a small car, the boot is big, too, with Geely saying it provides 375 litres of space.

We haven’t measured it in our lab for truly usable space, but it certainly feels big enough for a family’s economy-airline cabin bags and is clearly much larger than the boot of the Citroën e-C3, Nissan Micra or Renault 5. 

There’s also a 70-litre front boot that comfortably holds the charging cables and any other items you tend to keep in the car.

Geely says there are 36 individual storage slots around the cabin. I couldn't count that many in my assessment but there’s undeniably no shortage of space for bottles, phones and – at least in my household – random empty snack packets. 

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A decent drive

Initial UK press coverage of EX2 complained about the overzealous driver-assistance systems. Geely said it responded by making them easier to turn off, which perhaps doesn’t really solve the root cause of the problem.

I'm a known troublemaker when it comes to the world of annoying driver aids, but I'm not sure this was the right response. Better than nothing, I suppose. 

With all that said, I didn’t find them too bad. The driver attention monitoring system is a touch sensitive to you looking away from the road, but in careful driving on a mixed country road and motorway route, I had no noticeable issues. 

As a cheap small car, there should be no expectation of driving thrills. However, even with its fairly small motor, the EX2 has good acceleration, which is useful when merging onto motorways or into a roundabout.

It's best not to accelerate hard and steer at the same time, though; the front wheels feel like they’re floating away from the road as the rear-wheel-drive car pitches onto its rear suspension.  

Driving comfort overall is reasonable. The car does bob up and down over undulations on faster roads, but not in a way that’s desperately annoying. 

It’s easy enough to manoeuvre in and out of tight spots. It’s easy to park, too, although the parking sensor beeps (which come out of speakers in the headrests), are deafeningly loud and can’t be disabled or adjusted.

A Geely rep told me they’re working on an update on the parking sensors to improve this. 

Geely EX2: final thoughts

We haven’t put the EX2 through our full lab test so it’s hard to gauge how it’ll compare to its rivals on every point. However, you don’t need a tape measure (or our high-tech dummy) to know that this is certainly a roomy car for the price.

Its care-free driving experience and array of tech make it an attractive proposition. But it’s also got stiff competition from Renault, Nissan, Mini, Vauxhall, Citroen and BYD.

Take a look at our latest small EV reviews to see how those brands’ models fared in our lab tests. 

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