SINO THE TIMES

Chinese firms are targeting the UK with electric hatches that offer much, at least on paper. Do Europe’s established players have anything to fear? Illya Verpraet lines up the Chinese-built Smart #1 and BYD Atto 3 against the Cupra Born to find out

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Forget everything you know about Smart.

Tiny city cars? Well, the #1 (pronounced Hashtag One, I kid you not) is a chunky hatchback-roughly Volkswagen Golf-sized but a bit taller - and bigger Smarts still are on the way. Made in France? Wrong again, because the Hambach factory that was specially built to make Smarts now produces that ultra-British off-roader, the Ineos Grenadier.

Owned by Mercedes? Well, sort of. The Germans realised that making tiny but expensive cars in Europe wasn't very profitable, so Mercedes set up a joint venture with Geely (which also owns Volvo and Lotus) to build Smarts on Geely's SEA platform and assemble them in Xi'an, China.

The #1 is a very different car from the Smarts that came before, but it feels like the right product for this moment. The electric medium SUV class (VW ID 4 and friends) has filled up rapidly, so now it's time for the smaller ID 3 to get some more competition too.

But if your German EV hatchback is going to be built in China, why not skip the middle man and go for one from a Chinese manufacturer? Those are arriving in Europe thick and fast now, and the latest hopeful is BYD, short for Build Your Dreams. The Atto 3 is the first passenger car BYD is marketing in Europe, but the company is far from new to selling vehicles here, having had quite a bit of success selling electric buses to public transport companies all over.