Changan Deepal S05 Review: Price, range and boot space

Changan Deepal S05 at a glance:

• Body type: SUV
• Price range: £37,995 - £39,995
• Battery range: 278-303 miles
• Number of seats: 5 
• Boot capacity:  492 litres (plus 159-litre frunk)
• Insurance groups: TBC

Changan Deepal S05: Everything you need to know

If you were already struggling to keep up with the myriad Chinese brands landing in the UK in recent times, this really won't help. Changan is yet another one to add to the pile, but it does have a tie-up with a much more familiar brand – Mazda. The pair have a joint venture called Changan Mazda, the fruits of which include the Mazda 6e and CX-6e.

Really, though, both cars seem a bit more Changan than they do Mazda, so are you better off just going to the source? For the CX-6e, that involves getting a Changan Deepal S07. A bit too big for you? The car we're covering here, the Deepal S05, might be just the ticket. 

It's a similar size to cars like the Skoda Elroq and Kia EV3, and perhaps surprisingly, more expensive, starting at around £38,000. That's not a whole lot less than the larger S07, and enough to get a mid-spec version of either the Skoda or Kia. 

For that, you're getting a 68.8kWh battery pack powering a single motor mounted at the rear axle, producing 272PS. Pay £2000 extra, and you get an additional motor on the front axle, increasing the output to an impressive 435PS. This helps the S05 stand out a little better because that makes it the cheapest all-wheel drive EV by far.

That does come at a cost in terms of range, though, with the AWD version managing a distinctly unimpressive 272 miles on a full charge. It's not like the rear-wheel drive S05 is that much better, providing around 305 miles. That's slightly better than a Volvo EX30, but a long way off a Kia EV3 Long Range and Skoda Elroq 85, each of which can be bought for the same price as the entry-level S05. 

How we tested the Changan Deepal S05

We drove a rear-wheel drive Deepal S05 on a variety of roads ranging from twisting country roads to urban environments and dual carriageways. We weren't especially impressed with how the car performed in any of those settings. 

The suspension of the Deepal S05 is curious. It feels quite softly set up, yet it still manages to be uncomfortable, constantly fidgeting even on smoother sections of road. It's noisier than average on the move, and starts to feel a little wayward if you try to take a corner in it quickly. 

We had a good look around the various functions of the central touchscreen, finding it to be quite complicated, and something that the car relies much too heavily upon. Its electronic swivelling function is admittedly quite neat, but it strikes us as gimmickry that'll be seldom used by customers. 

Performance from the model we tested was perfectly adequate and nothing more, while the lag from the throttle pedal was quite frustrating. 

In better news, the cabin quality is great, and it does feel genuinely upmarket. How well everything in there lasts is a question we won't know for a while, given that Changan is an unknown quality. 

Is the Changan Deepal S05 a good car? 

The Deepal S05 falls short of the driving experience and capabilities of better-established cars, including the Skoda Elroq and Kia EV3. It might have gotten away with that if it were cheaper, but the pricing is curiously strong. It doesn't seem as good value as the larger S07, which it only slightly undercuts. 

It's not a car we can strongly recommend at its RRP. However, given how much standard kit it has, it might make some sense if you can score a good deal. Given how much money we've seen slashed from nearly new S07s already, it's definitely worth keeping an eye on the Deepal S05. In the meantime, an introductory 0% finance offer with a chunky deposit contribution gives the Deepal S05 a bit of an edge over the likes of the Skoda, but we'd still question whether the savings are worth the compromises. 

Changan Deepal S05: Range 

Exactly how far your Deepal S05 goes depends on whether you've specced the rear-wheel drive model or the more expensive all-wheel drive version. The rear-wheel drive car will go up to 303 miles on a full charge according to the WLTP Combined cycle, while the all-wheel drive S05 is rated at up to 278 miles. 

Both figures compare well to the Volvo EX30 and its 295 miles or range, but the S05 is a long way off the 356 miles managed by the slightly cheaper Skoda Elroq 85. The Kia EV3 Long Range is better still at 375 miles. 

Changan Deepal S05 charging times

While the Deepal S05 is behind a lot of similarly priced cars in terms of range, it edges ahead when it comes to rapid charging ability. Most Elroq models only charge at up to 175kW, while the most capable Kia EV3s manage a more modest 128kW. It's impressive, then, that the Deepal S05 charges at up to 200kW.

We find it a bit cheeky that Changan, like a lot of Chinese manufacturers, quotes its rapid charging time as a 30-80% charge when 20-80% is more common, making it seem more impressive than it actually is compared to rivals if you don't look closer. Anyway, that 30-80% charge, assuming conditions are optimal, will take about 15 minutes. 

Plugged into a 7.4kW home wallbox, it'll take just over nine hours to fully charge the car's battery from empty. 

This is perhaps one of the weakest aspects of the Deepal S05. The suspension is quite soft, which you might think means it'll be comfortable, but no, the S05 constantly jiggles around even on smoother road surfaces, and really struggles when it's rougher under the tyres. It also thumps its way over bigger imperfections like potholes with little grace. 

There's a fair bit of body roll in the corners, and the steering feels vague. Grip from the front tyres is adequate, while the rear-wheel drive model we tried seemed tidy enough, but only because the electronic stability control reigns things in. We did try turning this off (something we don't recommend you replicate), which made it quite easy to spin up the rear wheels. 

At cruising speeds, there's too much noise entering the cabin, both from wind and from the road. 

Changan Deepal S05: Batteries and motors

Unlike some rivals, which offer multiple battery sizes, there's just one offered in the Deepal S05. It's a 68.8kWh pack, which powers either a single motor at the rear of the car, or a pair to provide all-wheel drive. 

The rear-wheel drive model produces 268PS and 290Nm of torque, which we'd have expected to offer more than a fairly modest 7.5-second 0-62mph time. It feels brisk enough, but there is an annoying delay between pressing your foot on the accelerator and anything actually happening. Engaging the Sport mode via the central touchscreen (there's no dedicated drive mode button) seems to make precious little difference. 

If you want to go quicker, the all-wheel drive model ups the power to a very impressive 435PS and the torque to a chunky 502Nm. They're arriving in the UK slightly later, so we haven't tried one just yet, but again, it's not as quick as we'd expect for that kind of output, hitting 0-62mph in 5.5 seconds. A Skoda Elroq vRS is marginally quicker despite having nearly 100PS less to play with. 

The Deepal S05 scored the full five stars when assessed by Euro NCAP, with an especially impressive 94% score in the adult occupant category. It also score 87% for child occupants, 78% for vulnerable road users and 76% for its driver assistance systems. 

On that front, the S05 has a comprehensive suite of driver assistance systems working from 14 sensors, including various radars and cameras. Adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping assistance, autonomous emergency braking, blind spot monitoring, a surround-view parking camera (with a 'transparent' feature generating an under-car view) and a driver attention monitor all come as standard. 

We did run into issues with some of the systems, though. As is now mandatory, the S05 has a speed limit assistance feature, but the car we drove was picking up MPH speed limits and interpreting them as KMH, meaning you'd get an annoying beeping if you went over 37mph in a 60mph zone, because that's 60kmh. We were told this was a known issue and that it would be sorted, but it's not great that this problem has reached full production cars at all. 

It's quite easy to trigger the driver attention monitor, and several times in our drive, the emergency lane keeping assistance feature kicked in with a loud alarm inside the cabin, despite us being nowhere near the white line in any instance. 

The Deepal S05 is rated to tow braked loads of up to 1600kg. 

A boot space of 492 litres on its own is already a strong offering, putting the Deepal S05 slightly ahead of the Skoda Elroq and Kia EV3, but behind the 545-litre boot of the Renault Scenic E-Tech. The latter doesn't have a 'frunk' under-bonnet storage area like the S05's, though, and it's a big one at 159 litres (or 152 in the AWD version). While you do get frunk in the Elroq and EV3, they're both tiny, offering 22 and 25 litres respectively. 

There's an extra 28 litres of space under the boot floor, while folding the rear seat bench (a 40/20/40 split) opens up a total of 1250 litres of cargo volume. That's a fair way behind the 1670 and 1580 litres offered by the Elroq and Scenic when configured the same way, but identical to the Kia EV3 and far better than the paltry 1000 litres managed by the Volvo EX30. 

In the front, the centre console takes on the now commonly seen 'floating' arrangement with an open area underneath its two cupholders and twin smartphone charger pad, with a shallow storage tray at the bottom. There's also the usual storage area under the central armrest. The lack of glovebox seems like a bit of a miss amidst all this, though.

No one in the front will be complaining about space, while rear legroom is impressive. Even taller occupants should fit just fine, although headroom is underwhelming. 

On the face of it, the Deepal S05 does very well in this regard. There's an abundance of premium-feeling, soft-touch materials used in the cabin, with cheaper plastics kept well below your eyeline. A Skoda Elroq feels more basic inside by comparison. There's just a question mark of what it'll be like in there after a few years and many thousands of miles of use – being such a new brand to the UK, there are no long-term ownership experiences to tap into. 

The centrepiece of the interior is a 15.4-inch, 2.5K touchscreen infotainment system. Neatly, you can electronically rotate it either 15 degrees towards or 15 degrees away from the driver. It works best angled towards the driver, though, so we can't help but think that the novelty of playing around with it is gone, you'll just leave it set that way and leave it. Particularly because adjusting it takes multiple screen prods. 

That's a theme with the Deepal S05, with myriad functions buried in the touchscreen and the buttons and dials you might find for them in other cars entirely absent. We can't single out Changan for criticism here, because many Chinese brands seem to be taking inspiration from Tesla. And just a Model Y and Model 3, there isn't even an instrument cluster, but there is at least a head-up display fitted as standard with an augmented reality feature. Even so, we're not keen on this arrangement – not everyone's a fan of HUDs, so it seems a shame to force people to use one. 

Going back to the lack of buttons, one of the most frustrating is the lack of physical electric mirror adjustment control. Instead, you have to bring up a sub-menu on the screen, pick which mirror you want to adjust, then use the right-hand button pad on the steering wheel. And while it's nice to see the fold-out leg rest on the front passenger seat, it's baffling that you need to use the screen to operate that as well, when all other seat adjustment controls can be done with physical controls.

Oh, and if you get in one of these cars and wonder where the hazard light switch is, don't worry – it's not on the screen, but on the roof. That won't be easy to find if approaching a hazard, the kind of thing which has a habit of arriving with little warning. 

The native navigation system works OK, but we'd much rather use something like Google Maps or Waze. That's easy enough, as the Deepal S05 comes with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto as standard. You also get a decent 14-speaker sound system at no extra cost.  

These are the latest On The Road (OTR) prices for the new Changan Deepal S05 as of March 2026 – prices can change, so please use these as a guide before checking Changan's latest price lists.

Is the Changan Deepal S05 good value compared to rivals?

At its RRP, we don't think it does. Yes, it's very well specced for the money, coming with lots of things you'll need to pay extra for in rival cars, but we'd want the Deepal S05 to significantly undercut EVs from Kia, Renault, Skoda and Volvo to make up for frustrations. 

As it stands, you can get a Skoda Elroq 85 for slightly less than a Deepal S05, and the same goes for a Kia EV3 Long range. The all-wheel drive stands out better for its value, considering a Skoda Elroq vRS is about £7000 more expensive, but that won't be relevant for as many buyers. 

The reason why we bring up the RRP, though, is that there's a good chance you won't actually pay it. Already, there's a 0% finance deal with a £3000 deposit contribution, and we've seen as much as £9000 lopped off the price of nearly new S07s, so it's worth keeping an eye out for similar S05 bargains. With that much money taken off, the S07 starts to make a bit more sense, and it'd be the same for the S05.

It's the usual £205 for VED car tax every year, and all versions are well under the raised threshold for the government's expensive vehicle tax. 

Fully charging the battery from empty will cost about £17 based on the current electricity price cap, but if you're savvy, you'll slash that figure by getting a special EV tariff and timing your charging sessions to coincide with cheaper off-peak periods. 

We're yet to see insurance groups for the S05, but based on the S07, we wouldn't be surprised if they end up being quite a bit higher than rival vehicles. The S07 sits in group 45. 

The long-term reliability of the Deepal S05 is hard to predict, being a new car from a brand that's only just arrived in the UK. It's reassuring to see there's a seven-year, 100,000-mile warranty as standard, though. That's considerably better than most brands, which only offer three years, and matches Kia's excellent warranty programme. You also get the eight years and 124,000 miles of battery cover guaranteeing 70% state of charge.

Rather than having traditional trim levels, the Changan Deepal S05 is offered in a single specification with the following fitted as standard:

• 15.4-inch touchscreen
• Augmented reality head-up display
• 14-speaker sound system
• Wireless Apple CarPlay/Android Auto
• Wireless smartphone charger
• Keyless entry/start Heated and ventilated front seats
• Vegan 'leather' upholstery
• Vehicle-to-load capability
• Electrically adjustable front seats

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