New Geely EX2 2026 review: a respectable but forgettable small EV

Verdict

The Geely EX2 is a respectable but slightly forgettable small EV that struggles to stand out from the crowd. The tech on board is pretty good, as is the amount of standard kit, there’s plenty of space to play with, plus it’s acceptable to drive – even if we do have higher expectations for something supposedly tuned by Lotus. But the range and performance lag significantly behind key rivals, the interior is bland and there’s none of the charm or character that its similarly priced competitors have in spades. 

The Geely EX2 was the best-selling car in China last year, with nearly half a million flying out of showrooms. In the hope that its success will translate to global audiences, Geely has brought the small all-electric hatchback to the UK, and Auto Express was among the very first to drive it here.

The smart, slightly cute but very generic and rather anonymous-looking EV is known as the Geome Xingyuan in China, where it’s available from the equivalent of just under £7,000 – which maybe helps explain its massive popularity. Obviously, we were aware that it wouldn’t be that cheap over here, but we didn’t expect it to cost from £20,990.

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That starting price is low enough to make the EX2 one of the cheapest electric cars on sale in the UK when order books open towards the end of August. But it’s worth noting that the brilliant Renault 5, Fiat Grande Panda and Citroen e-C3 are all available for almost the same money. 

Meanwhile, other outstanding rivals such as the MG4 Urban, Kia EV2, Volkswagen ID. Polo and our newly anointed 2026 Supermini of the Year, the Cupra Raval, only cost a few grand more. 

Then there’s the range: the entry-level Pro model offers just 156 miles from its 35.4kWh battery, which is more in the ballpark of smaller and cheaper city cars such as the Honda Super-N and Renault Twingo. The R5, Grande Panda and e-C3 all boast around 200 miles of range. 

Perhaps not surprisingly, Geely predicts the base car will make up a tiny fraction of sales. Most people are likely to go for the upgraded Max and Ultra versions, which will cost from £23,490 and £25,490, respectively. These get a bigger 47.1kWh battery, but range only increases to 214 miles.

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Again, this means the EX2 falls short of the competition. For instance, the Renault 5 with its bigger battery pack costs from £23,945 and can cover up to 252 miles. Similarly, higher-spec versions of the EV2, ID. Polo and Raval are good for roughly 280 miles on a single charge. 

So if the EX2 can’t entice buyers with style, a staggering price or competitive range figures, like so many newcomers from China it has to rely on value-for-money. Thankfully, it delivers in that area. 

You might assume a car that costs the equivalent of £7,000 would be about as well equipped and modern inside as a chicken coop, but that’s not the case. Every EX2 features a 14.6-inch touchscreen with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity, an 8.8-inch driver’s display, electric seats with faux-leather upholstery and a suite of driver assistance systems that includes adaptive cruise control and blind-spot detection. Plus there’s an eight-year/125,000-mile warranty thrown in. 

Max trim simply adds the bigger battery and a more powerful motor, but the range-topping Ultra version provides a few extra luxuries. It gets a heated steering wheel and front seats, cooled wireless phone charging, a 360-degree camera system, ambient lighting and a powered tailgate. There’s also a two-tone paint scheme. 

More impressive than any of that, though, is just how spacious the EX2 is for a small electric car, especially compared to the Renault 5. At a little over 4.1 metres long the EX2 is slightly bigger than its French foe, but the result is what feels like considerably more room for passengers in the back of the Geely. Even six-foot tall adults will be comfortable, with legroom and headroom to spare.

Geely says there’s a total of 36 storage spaces and cubbies dotted throughout this car, including a unique drawer-style glovebox that, amazingly, is large enough for the charging cable. Customers will also be able to add an extra 25-litre storage box hidden underneath the rear seats. 

The 375-litre boot isn’t the biggest in this class, but its capacity is about 50 litres greater than the R5’s, and very nearly as much as you get in a VW Golf, plus there’s an additional 70 litres of storage under the bonnet. Fold the rear seats down and you get 1,320 litres to play with, which is, in fact, more than you get in a Golf. 

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Much like the exterior, the EX2’s cabin is simple, smart and solid, if not particularly exciting or plush. The big touchscreen is sharp and responsive, there are physical buttons on the steering wheel and a small selection of others on the centre console, while overall  everything feels well screwed or glued together. We think the illuminated constellation pattern on the dashboard and doors is a nice touch too – even if the idea seems to be pinched from Rolls-Royce.

However, it’s a sea of plastic inside the EX2. The top of the dashboard, the doors and the centre console all use hard, dull, cheap-feeling black plastic, and there’s gloss piano black stuff on the dash which is guaranteed to attract dust and fingerprints. The rest of the trim does a poor job intimating metal (at least we think that’s what it is trying to do).

Of course, even the best small EVs rely on a lot of plastic for their interior and can’t hide it. But the Renault 5 and Kia EV2 use fabrics to lift things and create a more interesting, inviting atmosphere, and that approach is more honest than the ultra-thin layer of synthetic leather in the Geely.

When it comes to tech, the big touchscreen is bright and sharp, and we found that all the menus load quickly, with big text and icons that are easy to tap while on the go. There’s a lot of menus and sub-menus that you have to route around to adjust things, but the same is true for every Chinese car we’ve tested. 

The driver’s display, on the other hand, uses a tiny font for the range and other info that makes it hard to read at a glance. It also displays your speed to one side, whereas the centre of the screen is taken up by a graphic of the car and what’s around you.

So the EX2 has its pros and cons, but what about the driving experience? Well, it’s not as fun or refined as the Renault 5, but it’s generally pretty good. The car never fully settles down, resulting in an undulating ride even on smooth tarmac, but it’s still comfortable, does a good job handling potholes and there’s not too much roll through corners. There’s even a nice weight to the steering.

Credit for that goes to Lotus, which is part of the wider Geely family and tuned the car for European markets. No, the goal wasn’t to make this small runabout feel like an Elise, but simply to tighten things up, because Chinese cars typically have much softer, boat-like handling that wouldn’t suit our roads.

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It’s a shame that the boffins at Hethel couldn’t eke any more power out of the EX2’s rear-mounted motor. The base model gets a mere 80bhp and 150Nm of torque, resulting in 0-62mph in more than 14 seconds. The others get 114bhp for 0-62mph in a still painfully slow 11.5 seconds, and that lack of oomph is very frustrating when pulling out of junctions or trying to overtake. 

We’re not expecting a small car like this to break the sound barrier away from the traffic lights, but the EX2 should feel more capable of merging with traffic than it does. 

On that subject, Geely claims the top speed is 80mph, which we were concerned would make overtaking on the motorway impossible. However, during our testing, we exceeded it trying to get past a lorry and the car didn’t panic or flash any warnings. We suspect someone on the engineering team may have misread a spreadsheet. 

Despite burying our foot in the carpet many times, over 60 miles of rural and urban driving, plus a bit of dual carriageway, we averaged a very impressive 4.6mi/kWh, and at that rate we would have achieved the car’s claimed range. 

Finally, like with so many newcomers from China, the EX2’s driver-assist tech still needs work. On multiple occasions, the lane-keep assist suddenly and sharply turned the wheel if it didn’t believe the car was in the centre of the lane, while frequent messages from the driver attention monitoring system to take a break are very annoying. 

At the moment, each of these has to be deactivated via one of the many menus in the touchscreen, but Geely has promised it’s working on a shortcut to make turning off certain ADAS functions much easier.

Ultimately, while we found the EX2 to be a totally fine electric hatchback, and even quite impressive in some areas, there’s a distinct lack of any character, personality or charm. This feels like a white goods vehicle in a world filled with nostalgic throwbacks and bold visions of the future that are more likely to resonate with buyers. 

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