Geely EX5 2026 review: Inspire long-term | Part 1

The long-awaited electric car price-parity is here. For the same price as a hybrid or combustion mid-size SUV from a mainstream brand, you can hop into one of these fully electric Geely EX5s.

You may know Geely as the Chinese giant which owns Volvo, Polestar, Lotus and others and the very traditional mid-size EX5 SUV is the brand’s first factory-backed shot at our market.

Read More About Geely EX5

• Geely EX5 2025 review: Australian first drive
• Geely EX5 2026 review: Inspire long-term | Part 2
• Geely EX5 2026 review: Inspire long-term | Part 3

We’ve grabbed one to run as a long-term daily driver for three months to find out.

Geely EX5 price and specs

Geely has lent us a top-spec EX5 Inspire for our three-month journey. It’s the higher of just two grades, priced at $44,990, before on-road costs.

That makes it more affordable than the enormously popular Toyota RAV4 GXL hybrid, and around the same money as a mid-spec Mazda CX-5 or Mitsubishi Outlander, both as purely combustion cars.

However, it’s also worth noting the Geely isn’t your only option here. You could also choose a Leapmotor C10 (which is slightly more expensive at $49,888 in equivalent spec but offers more driving range) or the BYD Atto 3 which also costs $44,990, before on-roads, but is a little smaller than the EX5.

While the EX5 is cheap, then, it’s far from under-equipped on the inside, with plenty of standard equipment. Our top-spec Inspire features 19-inch alloys, LED headlights, synthetic leather interior, a 15.4-inch multimedia touchscreen and 10.2-inch digital instrument cluster.

It even features stuff usually reserved for vehicles well above this price-point, like a panoramic sunroof (mercifully, with a shade), a power tailgate, heated and cooled front seats (with multiple message functions), a 16-speaker premium audio system and a head-up display.

Of course, like other modern EVs, it is also over-the-air connected and is regularly receiving updates.

The best part is, unlike Cherys or MGs or even budget versions of Kias, Hyundais or Toyotas at this price, the interior feels properly swish, with impressive material choices, a nice finish throughout and hardly a hard plastic finish to be seen or felt. It feels borderline premium in some ways.

Even the sound system, which is a Geely in-house unit from its Flyme (as in, fly me to the moon?) multimedia arm sounds great.

Given all of this, the EX5 leaves an extremely good initial impression, and I can see how it might wow people on a dealer showroom floor, especially given its keen price-tag.

Does the Geely EX5 have enough driving range?

The EX5 has only one battery at the moment, a 60.22kWh unit with LFP chemistry. In the case of the top-spec Inspire, this offers just a 410km range according to the WLTP standard, which, these days, isn’t a lot.

It’s been okay so far. Unlike the Cupra Tavascan I had previously, which offered over 500km of genuine range in similar conditions, this Geely seems to fall short of its official range by some margin despite performing better on consumption than expected, at 13kWh/100km compared to the official 14.7kWh/100km.

Right now, I estimate the maximum range I’m getting from a charge to be around 350-370km which is short of the 410km official number. This requires more investigation and I will complete a formal range test in one of the next two chapters of this review. 

Charging also isn’t at the front of the pack, with the EX5 only capable of charging at up to 100kW on DC, but it can top up at a very useful 11kW on AC. This combines with the range to make it more suitable as an urban cruiser rather than an inter-city tourer in Australia.

I’ve only charged it a handful of times, drawing range from a free 11kW charger while I’m at the shops with a 50kW DC charge taking it from 10-80 per cent in less than an hour. Despite its lower charging capacity, it had no problem maxing out a 75kW unit, which in 24 minutes took it from 15-65 per cent in 24 minutes. Expect 80 per cent in around half an hour, or 90 per cent (LFP lets you charge pretty quickly even after 80 per cent) in around 40 minutes.

What to look out for in the Geely EX5

It’s not all good news though. As soon as I started driving the EX5 I quickly found some frustrations. Even as someone who drives a different car every week or so, I found figuring out the multimedia system perplexing.

I’m even wondering if the people who designed the multimedia system have ever driven a car. This is for several reasons. Firstly, it’s not well laid out. The home screen is a massive wallpaper with a few shortcuts adorning the bottom 30 per cent of the screen. Why?

At least other brands which have fallen into this touchscreen-dependence have the good sense to make the home screen more like an iPad, with lots of icons and shortcuts to features you’ll use.

Instead I’m presented with a home panel which is 70 per cent useless, with small shortcuts across the bottom to access key features, or worse still, an entire sub-menu (or two) just to access them.

Geely has had the forethought to put some climate shortcut buttons and a multi-function dial in the centre for ease of access, which is appreciated, but there are no physical controls for the sunroof, for example. There’s another touchscreen menu for that hidden three or four presses deep.

So, the usability isn’t the best. I’m hoping someone at the brand is listening, because this is one of those things that can honestly write a car off someone’s shopping list.

The worst part about it, is it could so easily be fixed with a software update which just re-thinks some of these menus and brings key functions and more usable shortcuts to the home screen.

Does the Geely EX5 have a phone app?

On the topic of software updates, there’s some good news. A few days after picking the car up, it did a software update which enabled wireless Apple CarPlay, which works very nicely and looks great on all that screen real estate and the car has since had another software upgrade, so at least the brand is frequently maintaining its systems.

I also gained access to the paired phone app, which is better than some. It shows you the car’s location, state of charge, exterior and interior temperatures and allows you to schedule a trip (which pre-conditions the interior and battery temp). It also offers a range of controls. You can unlock and lock the car, open the sunroof or tailgate, even remotely turn on the air conditioning or heating and cooling for the seats - a function I’m using more as Sydney's weather heats up.

I like it, but it’s not as swish as the app market leader, which is still Tesla, and it also seems to have a significant delay, especially if the car has been ‘asleep’ previously.

First driving impressions

I was shocked at how quiet and refined the EX5 appeared to be from the moment I picked it up. In low-speed traffic the car is near-silent and the seats and quality of interior trims jumped out at me as a significant cut above some other new players in the market.

While the leathers might be synthetic, they’re very convincing and the seats are spongy and plush. You simply sink into them.

The steering is very light and artificial, but not in an unsettling way. There’s still some feedback there and I’d liken it to the steering tune in current Kia electric cars.

Visibility is excellent mainly because of the EX5’s simplistic traditional SUV silhouette which grants it big windows.

The ride is ultra soft. It’s about the opposite end of the spectrum from a Model Y (known for its brittle and harsh ride) or even the sporty Tavascan I had previously.

Instead, this Geely feels like you’re driving on jelly as it floats over road imperfections, bounces gently over corrugations and softly compresses into speed bumps. It’s hard to get it to have a harsh reaction to anything.

The comfort, as a result, is unrivalled in this cheap EV segment (or, indeed, even mid-spec mainstream combustion SUV segment), but it’s also hardly the last word in body control.

It feels a bit floaty and tilts quite a bit into corners but I’d argue most people don’t even want or need their car to handle as sharply as a Mazda CX-5, which this car is about the opposite from on this front, so I think the comfort on offer in the EX5 will be worth the trade-off for most. 

While I usually appreciate a more balanced approach, I must admit I’m loving how refreshingly comfortable the EX5 is on Sydney’s garbage inner-suburb road surfaces.

In the next chapter I’m hoping to investigate the range more thoroughly and check out the EX5’s vehicle-to-load features. I’m also hoping to take more people for a ride in it to get some more impressions outside of just my own, and I’ll have the opportunity to test it against some of its recently-launched rivals - so stay tuned.

Acquired: September 2025

Distance travelled this month: 864km

Odometer: 4534km

Average energy consumption this month: 13.5kWh/100km

Total running cost: $47.67