Geely Starray review

It's about as uninspiring as family crossovers come. The steering is feather light (useful around town) but feels disconnected from the wheels, offering little to no feedback (less useful). The accelerator and brake pedals aren’t what you’d call progressive either – merely dabbing the latter will have you straining uncomfortably against your seatbelt.

The ride at least is mostly fine, staying relatively composed over pockmarked British roads. There is a little bit of body roll, but not so much that it'll have any little 'uns throwing up their Frosties. So that’s something.

Is the hybrid system any good? 

It’s one of the car’s stronger points. In total you've got 259bhp emanating from the Starray's 1.5-litre 4cyl engine and electric motor, but in isolation they're good for 95bhp and 214bhp apiece. That means you'll be relying on the e-motor 99 per cent of the time, with the engine mostly there to support motorway cruising and top up the battery like a range extender.

You do get a couple of driving modes, including Pure (EV mode), Hybrid (self-explanatory) and Power (maximum responsiveness). Most of the time though you'll leave it in the default Hybrid, which prioritises EV running, if only because that four pot is surprisingly noisy and feels woefully underpowered.

At higher speeds the wind and road roar drowns out most of the din from the engine, but anywhere else… you’ll want to turn up the radio. Or buy ear muffs.

Which should also offer you some peace and quiet from the driver attention monitor, which constantly shouts at you to pay attention to the road and lambasts you if you so much as yawn. Meanwhile the driver assist tech bongs incessantly if it misreads the speed limit. All of it requires a deep dive into the touchscreen to turn off, too.

Is it reasonably fast?

It’s no Usain Bolt but it’s no couch potato either, with 0-62mph seen off in eight seconds flat. That’s identical whether you go for the smaller or bigger battery, despite the 85kg weight penalty of the latter.

But efficiency is the name of the game here, and in that regard the Starray fares well. In the lab the 18.4kWh and 29.8kWh models returned 118mpg and 202mpg WLTP respectively, though it’s unlikely you’ll get anywhere near those numbers – we averaged 55mpg, including several trips up and down the motorway.

You’ll want to plug it in lots if you’re looking to maximise efficiency – Geely quotes three hours to charge the smaller battery or just over four and a half for the bigger battery on a 7kW home charging unit.