Changan Deepal S05 RWD Review: 300 miles, £38k, Mobile Entertainment Centre?

Hi guys and today I've got for you the Chang'an D-PAL SO5. This is one of two new cars entering the UK market from this Chinese company Chang'an. The other one is the SO7. So this is the sort of lower of those two. Now you may be thinking Chang'an what the hell is that? Actually Chang'an is one of the oldest and most established car manufacturers in China. In fact I first reviewed a Chang'an well over a decade ago. That was in Dubai. It's new in the UK but it was in Dubai back then. Now that was not an EV. This of course is an EV. It's a five-door five-seater family crossover type EV. Has about 268 brake horsepower. It's got about 290 newton meters of torque. Will do 0 to 62 miles per hour in 7.5 seconds and has a range of just over 300 miles. I'll put all the spec and everything on the screen. It will charge at speeds of up to 200 kilowatts. The car is very well equipped. It's very well appointed inside. It's got a ton of tech and stuff on it. So prices for this is £37,990. That's just a smidge under £38,000. So as usual what we'll do is we'll take a look around the car. We'll check out the practicality. We'll check out the rear space, the front space and then we'll take it for a drive. So if you're wondering about the color of this thing, because I was, is this a blue or is it something else? It's actually called Andromeda Blue. So yes, it is blue. It's got a very sleek, very modern design, slim headlights, a bluff front end, no grille of course. It doesn't need it. It was actually designed in Turin in Italy. So it's quite a European design. It's a very slippery shape. It's got a 0.25 CD drag coefficient. So that is actually quite good for this car. Huge wheels. I always put big wheels on this thing. It's got 20 inch rims, but they're quite nice looking. It's about 4.6 metres long and 1.9 metres wide. It's got this very nice clean side design that you would typically expect from this sort of car. Now the one unusual feature that I've got to mention, because it's here and it's only on one side of the car, not on the other side. This feature you'll only find on this side of the car. And what exactly is this feature? Well, it is an energy interaction ring light. Try saying that quickly. Energy interaction ring light. And what it's doing, if you see here, it's actually telling you how much charge the vehicle has got. Now I don't know why you want to advertise that to the world. And also I don't see why it's on this side when the charger actually is on the other side of the car. But anyway, that's an interesting. And also the driver gets in on the other side, so you don't see it. But it's there. And it tells you, it's you know what? It's a bit different. It's a bit of fun. So I know. Again, nice, smooth finish to the end. They're all tapered off quite nicely. It's got a spoiler on the thing on the top of the hatch here. And it's got this very interesting sort of third brake light sort of thing here, which looks like it's something out of Thunderbirds, doesn't it? Full length light bar, of course. And there's the name Chengen D-PAL S05. And of course, like I said, the charging light is on that side, but the charging cable actually plugs into this side. Wouldn't it make sense to put it on the same side as this? Anyway, let's see what the boot space is like. So let's take a look at the boot. Look at the size of that key. Now you can do it from here as well, or I can just press a button under there. And there you go. It's opening up. Now you have 492 litres of space in the back here. If you fold the seats down, you've got 1250 litres. And it's also got a pretty big frunk as well. A boot under the front bonnet. And that's about 159, I think, 159 litres of space for that one. It's got 60-40 split folding rear seats. Of course, it's got this cover as well. Just to remind you in case you forgot, because we're not familiar with these cars, so we need to be reminded what car it is that we're driving. We've got this. It looks like a remove if you want to actually. And underneath here, you do have a little bit of space there because you've got a little bit of a cavity, a box, you know, with some tools and cables and stuff like that, that you can put in there. And then that's pretty much it. You've got a light, you've got a 12-volt charger, you've got a woofer speaker, I think, there. And that's pretty much it. So that is the boot. About what you'd expect for this sort of car. Right, it's got water closing. Let's get into the backseat and see what that's like. Right then. Let's get into the rear, close the door. Now, you might be thinking that that is actually it's not too bad. I mean, look, there is space between the knees. But the thing I have to tell you, I'm six foot one and a bit with long legs. And normally what I do is I'll set the driver seat for myself and then I'll sit behind it. Now what happens here is that even though you can see that the car is on, there's nothing I can do about that. Because, you know, as soon as you come up to the car and unlock it, everything switches on. And what has happened here is that this seat goes into a back position. So it gives you more room for the driver to get in. So theoretically, it's robbing space here in the back. But having said that, having used the word robbing space, there's still plenty of room here. So actually trying it like this gives you an example of the extreme situation if there's somebody really big sitting in the front, and somebody quite tall sitting in the back, and I'm still reasonably comfortable. Now, my feet are a little bit hemmed in, but I can still wiggle them. That's not too bad. Shin space, no issue whatsoever. And knee space, not a problem at all. Knees a little bit high, as usual with electric cars, the floor is a little bit higher. So that's why you get that. Other than that, it's not too bad. Around here, you've got good elbow space. There's some nice design. Look at this, Deepal Audio. It's actually got a really good sound system. I'll tell you about that. Quite a nice bit of trim. You know, it looks like, you know, the quality, feel, fit, and finish is not too bad at all, you know. That feels quite nice, you know. So it's all quite good. That is soft there. And over here, what have we got? So we've got a vent, and we have a regular USB and a USB-C. So you've got the option there. You've got a little pocket there, so that's quite good. Over here, you've got Chelsea anchor points. Nice quilted look again for the rear seat, so that's quite good. And then, of course, you have an armrest, and in the armrest, kind of a cup holder thing. Deepal, they really like to put the branding everywhere, don't they? Deepal, Deepal, Deepal. Don't forget the name. You won't, will you? And the other thing I've got to show you is that it's got a little second little window here in the background. So just, so, I don't know if that's not background. What do I mean by that? Just behind you, I mean. So just to let a little bit extra light. Not that that's a problem, because, of course, you've got this full-length panoramic glass roof as well. Cool. Let's get the front and see what that's like. Did you see that? So this is the thing, that when you get into the car, and the car was already on, like I said, you know, there's no point turning off. If I lock it, it'll turn off, but as soon as you approach and unlock it, it turns on. As I got into the car, the screen, and there's only one screen, as you can see. Now, there is a heads-up display, which you might be able to make out, but there's only one screen, and the screen turned towards me when I got in. And one thing I discovered is, if I just lift my butt from the seat, then eventually, it will think I'm not here, and it will find that point straight. And also, what we've just discovered is that, if there's no driver in here, and there is a passenger, it will turn to the passenger. Now, everything in this car is pretty much controlled through this screen. So we'll go through that in a minute, but not in detail. The reason being is that, because there's so much stuff in this screen, and there's so many things that it can do, I've done a separate video on that. So you can go and watch that video, and that's a full in-depth of everything that's on the screen, and how it all works. Sitting in the car, there's a camera, there's your monitor that's monitoring you. Heads-up display is from there. It's quite nice. This is kind of softest touch, a sort of rubbery feel to it. It's got the look of a full-length vent, but the vent is there, two vents there, and then the vent is there in the corner. There's some stitching there. That's, again, nice, soft. It feels like a kind of a material. This is the steering wheel. This is all actually quite hard. It's already starting to scratch here, so I don't know how that bodes for its future quality, but the stitching on it is quite nice, and there's some leather. There are some buttons. The only buttons you get, you get the door opening, of course, you get the windows, you get locks, and then you get, this is for your stereo controls, and your voice control, and then on this side, this is your cruise control, and of course, you get the stalks, which is doing quite a bit of work with the headlights and the wipers on that one, and that's basically your drive, so park, and then reverse neutral drive, and you push it down again to activate cruise control or intelligent cruise control. Over here, you've got the wireless charger, and then there's a space to store stuff. There's your, you can literally just do that to open and close these vents. No glove box that I can see. No glove box, and not that, like, one time I thought there was no glove box. It turned out the button was in here. No, there's, I just, I really don't think there's actually a glove box, but what you do get is, of course, with the couple, there's a tray down here, and in the tray, and just above the tray there, you can see there's one USB there as well, and then in here, you've got quite a big, big, you think that's not a big cubby box, but actually, you can remove that, and then you find that it's actually quite a deep cubby box, so then you've got a sort of split level to the cubby box. Full length panoramic roof, full bleed mirrors, rear view mirror there, and that's been, and again, another reminder of what car you're in there, and also on the speaker as well. So, you know, and down there, there's the only reminder of what manufacturer it is. That's on the floor mats, but other than that, that's it. Seating position is pretty good. Again, with the long leg, now the seat has moved forward. It's moved into my driving position, and one of the good things I will show you is that when we're in park, if I adjust my driving position, it immediately gives you the opportunity to save it there, and then you can reset, and save, and come back to it. One of the things I must mention is it's done it twice. It hasn't done it every time, and I don't know why it's done it, but twice is what it's done, is I've got in, I've closed the door, and the seat moved forward as I expected it to do, but then it just carried on, and eventually I found myself like literally crushed against the the dashboard, and you basically then have to activate the seat, or open the door to get it to stop. I don't know why it's done it. Maybe it glitched. I'm not sure, but it has done it. So anyway, other than that, it's all pretty straightforward. Now, this screen here, like I said, more detail in another video, but just to quickly give you a summary, this is the home screen. This is what you get. You also have a quick shortcut screen, so you pull that down, and you got things like heads-up display, and open tailgate, the mirror, this is how you adjust the mirrors, etc, etc. So that's all there. Down here, you've got these shortcuts, which you can also get rid of, or you can bring them back like that, and you've got your pressure, you've got your the details of how the car is doing in terms of the charge, mileage, all the rest of that. Again, go back there. Your search button, playback, your connectivity, that's all there as well. That's your settings for the car, a whole load of settings and different things that you can do with the car. The sound, the sound system is really good. I've got it on dynamic sound, very nice. To be honest, the stereo is actually really good in this car, so that's quite impressive, and the dynamic sound is the one to have, although you can have equalizer and everything there as well. Connectivity is all there, driver assist features, so you've got your driving assist features, intelligent cruise, adaptive cruise, intelligent cruise is where adaptive cruise is, of course, distance keeping, and it shows you that there, so if I do that, it shows you the distance, and if I do that, then it shows you a different way. Intelligent speed assist, all the rest of those things, and driving preferences. Now, you've got the drive modes as well, so you've got eco, eco, comfort, sport, and custom, and in custom, you can then click that, and then you can customize. You can go acceleration, power, steering mode, so this is the way I've got it. Acceleration, fast, steering is in sport, recuperation is normal. We'll get, when we talk about driving, we'll talk about that, but there is a regen. It isn't necessarily one pedal mode, but when you put it into a maximum, strong, you know, maximum or strong, whatever, then you do find that it drags quite a bit. It feels a bit awkward. It doesn't feel as smooth, so I'll put it back into normal. Brake assist mode is when, you know, when you brake and the car dips down. A lot of these Chinese cars are doing this now, where they sort of resist that to keep the car a bit more stable, and it just keeps a bit more comfortable, so that's that. The other thing, just quickly, I'll touch on, is all of these apps here. Now, in these apps, you've got that, which is your 360, and in the 360, this is quite handy, because you can actually adjust the camera and show what you actually want to see, so you can see the side of the wheels and stuff like that. One more thing to show you here is the driving recorder. Now, this is basically logged. This is like, you don't need dash cams in this car, because this is basically logging everything, so in an emergency thing, it's capturing that photo, ADAS video, and it's basically capturing these videos as well, and then you can store them. It's recording all the time, it's on a loop, so that's what it does. So, yeah, it basically is recording your behaviour. I don't believe it's being uploaded anywhere, but that's what it's doing. Anyway, that's all the stuff that's there. I think now is the time to take you for a drive. Check out Brown Car Guy's latest novel, Silent Ruin. Action, adventure, spies, betrayal, romance, plus, of course, cool cars and car chases, it's got the lot. And don't forget how to be an automotive content creator, the Uless Files and Quantum Races. All Brown Car Guy's books are available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. So here we are then in the Chengen D-PAL SO5, as it's so fond of constantly reminding us that that is its name. And I have actually driven this car quite a bit on a mixture of motorways and A&B roads and around town. So whilst we are going for a drive, I've actually formed most of my opinions. And most of my opinion is basically that it is, it's a regular car, there is nothing here that will stir your soul, but there is nothing here that will upset you or stress you either. And I think that's probably really what this car is going for. It's going for an ease of driving, an ease of use, and pretty much a straightforward, no surprises, nothing unusual. That's not to say that it's slow or that it can't handle. It's just that you don't want to any of those things in this car. The performance is there if you need it, but normally you won't, you'll be driving at a quite a normal rate like I am now. And as we're checking it about, it's not a car that I would say necessarily wants to be chucked around. I wouldn't say that there's anything wrong with it, the handling is okay. But it's not anything that is communicating with you, talking to you and encouraging you to get a little bit frisky with it. It's a car that basically is saying, you know, I'm going to get you A to B, you know, as calmly and as smoothly as I can. Having said smoothly, the ride I feel is a little bit brittle on this car. You can definitely hear a bit of road noise as well. And you can get a little bit of sensation. And sometimes over the sort of, you know, potholes and things that we've got here, as you can see, there's a bit of movement there. And it does seem to get a little bit brittle. That said, it's not harsh or uncomfortable or anything like that. It's just that there is an element there where you go actually, you know, there are the cars that may be a little bit smoother. But you know, but overall, like I said, I mean, the more we're in comfort mode, you can put it into sport, or you can put it into custom. Now with the sport, as what happens with all of these EVs, all that actually really happens when you put it into sport, is that you get a little bit more throttle response, and you'll lose some of your range, really. And actually, in this one, actually, the throttle is now getting a little bit too jumpy, you know, in fact, I'm going to put it back into comfort, because unless I'm out of town, and I'm on some like fast roads, I don't want to put that into comfort, because that's just a little bit too unnaturally responsive to the inputs of my right foot, if you like. So just leaving it in comfort is actually fine. Or you can set it up in custom mode, which as we said, you know, you can set up things like the acceleration mode, which actually is weird, because in the comfort mode, I've got it on fast as well. And so in custom mode, but you know what, for around town, we keep it in comfort. Like I said, the performance is there if you need it. Visibility is not too bad. You can see most of the bonnet at the front, the camera thing really helps. I think one thing they really should have done is put a camera button right at the top. One of the things I thought over here at the top, there was a camera button. I thought that was for getting cameras. Actually, it turns out that's for getting the recorded videos. So really, they should have put a 360 camera button right at the top, because otherwise, what you have to do is you have to go into the apps and then get to it. And sometimes, you know, around town, you need you need to see where the wheels are and how much space you've got. I mean, you know, at 1.9 meters, it's a reasonably, you know, fat, pH fat vehicle. So other than that, it's not really a problem. You know, you don't do a lot of head turning in this, but actually having a little extra window there, it's kind of nice because it gives an illusion of visibility when you look over your shoulder. But, you know, again, the cameras are there and the blind spot assistance and all the rest of it. The steering is very, very light, as you would expect. And the braking also, like what I found is that again, when it has too much, as I was saying earlier, when it has too much of the regen, then it does feel a bit sticky. As soon as you know, you even even trying to accelerate feels like you're having to fight against the resistance, if you see what I mean. And that's not necessarily how you want it to be, especially when you're just trying to work your way through traffic. So actually just leaving it in a moderate or normal mode is fine and it does enough for regen. The usage of the charge has been actually quite reasonable. From what I've been able to ascertain in the trips that I've done, the estimate that it gives you is actually quite accurate. So when it tells you that, you know, this is your mileage, and actually when you look at how many miles you've done and how many miles you've lost, it's roughly about the same, even when I was doing motorway miles and stuff. So it wasn't too far off. So there was only a slight discrepancy of it. So, you know, good, good, good, good work there getting that pretty close to accurate. But there is, I have found sometimes a little bit of sort of artificial sense to the braking. And it doesn't quite feel natural. But that actually, to be honest, you often get that in quite a few EVs, where you have that sense of the braking not being quite linear as you'd expect it to be. Having said that, nothing wrong with it works really well. And yeah, you know, as powerful as you'd expect it to be. It does make a kind of, at lower speeds, you can especially hear it, the noise that it makes. And it's a kind of, well, I think I've actually like set it up in this one, which is a kind of a space cruiser type of sound. And I think you can adjust those. But you know, it's interesting. It's also got those external speakers where you can actually bark orders at pedestrians if you like. But I found the speaker is very low on that. So you can tell them, look, I'm here, you know, be aware of me, or you know, police vehicle behind or something like that. I think you can even record messages. But the volume, the external volume is very low on that. And you know, you'd have to really need the presence of mind because you have to go into the right setting in order to find that and then activate it. So it's easier to just open the window and shout at somebody. So overall, Dan, another great new entry into the market in this sort of segment, Chinese EV SUVs at that sort of sub 40k price point, there's quite a lot of choice really now for you to have a look at if you're interested in that sector of the market. This one is very well equipped. It's very recently, very well, very reasonably finished. So it's definitely something to put on the shortlist and check it out. It's also like I said, got a lot of features and a lot of you know, toys and gimmicks and stuff like that. And it's getting close to that sort of Chinese thing that you're getting in a lot of prototypes and Chinese concept cars where they're really sort of pushing the envelope on what features you can have in a car and what sort of variety of features you can have in a car. And it's sort of really sort of giving you that getting to the point where this is this is almost a mobile entertainment center more so than it is an actual car. But there you go. That's my verdict of it. Check it out. Let me know what you think of it. And I look forward to reading your comments and I'll catch you all in the next video. If you found this video useful or entertaining, support the BrownCarGuy channel at these links. Hit like, leave a comment and make sure you're subscribing.