Jaecoo E5 review

It’s not the least bit taxing, we’ll say that much. Hop in and the car will already be ‘on’, ready for you to select drive or reverse via the right-hand stalk behind the wheel. Acceleration is linear (car journalist speak for ‘one-dimensional’) and the brakes make light work of slowing and stopping. If you’re new to EVs, this is as easy as the transition gets.

The steering is almost as numb as the Jeacoo 5’s but responds much sooner off the straight-ahead, giving you far more control over where you put it on a narrow road. Oh boy is that a relief. Eco, Normal and Sport modes actually do something here, altering the throttle response and steering effort.

What about the ride, is it comfortable?

Mixed results. On one hand it’s a vast improvement on the 5 – the chassis performs better with the extra weight of the battery – and you’re not thrown around to anything like the same degree. But it’s still unsettled on the whole, especially on rural roads where bumps, crests and camber push it around and interrupt your flow. The Euro-specific tuning only goes so far.

Potholes make a loud clunk through the cabin, but the suspension does at least take the edge off harsh impacts. Imagine zorbing, but in an SUV and not an inflatable hamster ball.

Drive it hard and you’ll get torque steer, even without full throttle; the brakes lack bite for bigger stops; the car feels aloof through tight turns. Yeah, this isn’t a car to put a smile on your face.

So the overall impression? It’s very dull. And the irony of the marketing spiel about adventuring is that the E5 is at its most impressive on the motorway… although there are issues there too.

Issues? What issues?

The regen. You get three levels – low, medium, and high – with the latter of those intended as a one-pedal mode. But even in the weakest setting, you can be rolling along in traffic and lifting off the accelerator by half a millimetre at the wrong speed means it kicks in and suddenly scrubs off speed. So you pitch forward, immediately correct it with the throttle, and lurch back in your seat again. Time after time after time. It’s annoying as heck.

Refinement on a faster road isn’t too bad; a bit of wobble and shake, but nothing that requires a sick bag. And 201bhp is more than enough to dart into gaps in the outside lane.

Efficiency isn’t outstanding though. The 3.0 mi/kWh we saw on the motorway is an average return for this size of car, and while you can eke that upwards with slower urban driving, you’re facing real-world range of 180-230 ish miles and likely worse than that when cold weather hits.

The Frontera Electric, e-C3 Aircross, e-2008 and EV3 all promise more miles from fewer cells. And the latter has the option of a bigger battery too, as does the Elroq. No such luck for the E5. Yet.