CHANGAN DEEPAL S07

Yet another Chinese brand arrives with a keenly priced, tech-heavy SUV

- VICKY PARROTT

Meet the Changan Deepal S07. Yup, that's right, another brand arriving from China - but bear with me, because Changan actually has heritage and its Deepal brand already has merits.

Changan is the oldest Chinese manufacturer of passenger cars, having been producing them for its domestic market since 1984. Not only that, but it also has had a design centre in Italy since 2001, another in Germany since 2021 and an R&D centre in the UK since 2010.

Changan launched the Deepal brand in 2022, and here we have its first UK-market model, the S07. This 4.75m-long, five-seat electric SUV uses a CATL-sourced 75kWh (usable capacity) nickel-manganese-cobalt battery for a range of 295 miles. It’s aimed squarely at the Skoda Enyaq, Tesla Model Y and BYD Sealion 7.

To my eyes, the S07 is breathtakingly derivative. It looks like a Lotus, a Lexus, a Polestar, a Cupra, a BYD and plenty more besides. At a glance, I'd struggle to tell it apart from a number of other big electric SUVs, and I stare at these things for a living...

The interior is a big selling point, though. It’s spacious and the perceived material quality is decent, with a smart blend of materials, a tactile steering wheel and a generally solid feel that will give Tesla something to think about.

There's no traditional driver's readout, but a standard head-up display offers a speed readout as well as augmented sat-nav guidance.