Which are the best Chinese car brands?

Are you nervous about buying a car from an unknown Chinese brand? Perhaps you worry about reliability, or quality. Maybe you’re concerned about the political impact of buying a car from a country with which the UK has tense relations, and against whom the UK has traditionally guarded the privacy of its data and security.

The reality, however is, that last ship has largely already sailed. Many of the cars we currently drive are manufactured in, and exported from, China, including the MG4 and Tesla Model 3. China has already indisputably stolen a march on everything from electric cars, to battery technology, to the mining and processing of the rare earth materials needed to build them. Many more cars contain technology and parts imported from China, and we are heavily reliant on batteries from the same.

Geopolitics aside here’s an objective look at the new car brands and vehicles coming from China and entering the UK market now, and a look at how they compare with more established brands from Europe, Japan, Korea and the rest.

The two obvious selling points for all the cars mentioned below are price and reliability. The sticker prices on models from most of the Chinese brands listed below aren't the cheapest, but they represent good value and, most crucially, according to the Autotrader Road to 2035 report, if these new brands wished to drop them further and engage in a price war for customers, they could drop them a lot lower. Labour costs are low, parts and material supplies are plentiful and they are already manufacturing at volume, so are able to launch in the UK by undercutting European rivals, in many cases by as much as £10,000 per car. To give you an idea of just how much further they could go, the BYD Dolphin sells in China for the equivalent of £13,000; in the UK the same car is priced at £25,000.

As for reliability, although they are new to us, these brands have been turning out hundreds of thousands of electric cars in China for a good few years (last year they sold 24m electric cars - more than America and the EU combined). This has given them an inherent head start over European rivals and their technology is well proven, so reliability shouldn’t be an issue, and we may find they offer industry-leading long warranties of eight years or more.

Would it help if I said there’s something for everyone? No, thought not.

Go on then, let’s have a crack.

The difficulty here (I know, can’t help hedging my bets), is that due to the pace at which Chinese brands can completely reinvent their cars if we don’t like them in the space of about 18 months (not as great as it sounds: ask yourself how they can literally reinvent the wheel so quickly – it’s as much to do with cheap labour rates and making their workforces do long hours in factories as it is to do with scale and efficiency).

So, in descending order, from best to, umm, least best, here are the best Chinese brands.

Skip to:

​BYD​

​Jaecoo​

​Omoda​

​Geely​

​Xpeng​

​Zeekr​

​Denza​

​Aion​

BYD

Jaecoo

You can’t turn a street corner now without seeing a Jaecoo 7 on the road. This is the SUV that everyone quickly dubbed the Temu Range Rover, on the basis that it could in some way be mistaken for its much more expensive, luxury rival. On what planet that might happen, we have yet to discover. It is only a comparison that someone who has never set foot inside a Range Rover could make. There is zero that these two brands or cars have in common. Jaecoo builds cheap SUVs with unsubtle American grilles, uninspiring interior design, DAB radios that don’t work, tiny digital displays for the driver that fail to provide any helpful information, and tiny graphics on central screens that require a swipe and press to get to the volume control. Range Rover is a supreme luxury vehicle with soft pale leathers, innovative craftsmanship, interesting materials like ceramics, technical fabrics and rare woods, the best air suspension, large buttons, wonderful audio and unparalleled off-roading. Get it?

There’s also the Jaecoo 5, which we prefer.

Omoda

Geely

I’m really impressed by the way Geely cars drive, if not their naming structure – how the hell can anyone remember what a Starray is versus an EX5? I do however like the way a Starray drives, very much, and more thought seems to have gone into their interiors than those of Omoda or Jaecoo. The car feels European, and, dare we say it, sophisticated?

The EX2 comes in pretty pastel colours and has a good reversing camera, but it’s beaten in every way by the Hyundai Ioniq 3 and Kia EV2.

Xpeng

Zeekr

Denza

Aion