Inside China's £6k mini-EVs: Geely Geometry Panda driven

Packaging four seats in a 3m-long car inevitably means you can fit only tiny 12in wheels, which – combined with the slab sides and a cabin tall enough to seat four, very upright adult humans – means they do look more than a little like pieces of giant wheely luggage. That design flaw is countered by a range of inventive and playful solutions to appeal to their mostly younger customer base. These include vibrant paintwork (as on Liuxan’s car), an intentionally comical roof spoiler on the Panda Knight, a convertible version of the Hongguang Mini and the oddly appealing Baojun Yep mini-SUV.  One version of the Panda plays on the SUV theme with a Land Rover Defender-style ladder and black ‘handles’ on the bonnet. This is a long way from the po-faced dorkiness of the old Reva G-Wiz. The low, low cost of these cars is a product of falling battery prices and the segment’s almost universal use of lower-cost lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery chemistry, which gives them a range that far exceeds the lead-acid batteries that preceded them. The added range also means they qualify for new energy vehicle (NEV) credits that their makers can sell to other brands that would like to carry on with combustion engines. Despite this, the segment isn’t as hot in China as it was two years ago. Hongguang Mini sales almost halved last year to 237,863, according to sales aggregator Bestsellingcarsblog.com. Partly that’s due to newcomers such as the Yep, the Changan Lumin and the Rainbow from newly revived Zhidou.