by Kelly Fisher
I spent a week with the Geely E2 wondering why I liked it more than I was supposed to. On paper it’s the sensible, slightly more grown-up answer to the BYD Dolphin Surf: same price bracket, same segment, same basic pitch of “your first EV, minus the financial anxiety.” But where the Dolphin Surf is doing its best to be adorable with BYD’s own marketing leans hard into students, first-time buyers and “cute tech”, the E2 has quietly decided it would rather be taken seriously.
Design-wise, the E2 doesn’t shout. It’s a five-door hatchback that reads as grown-up rather than gimmicky, with clean surfacing. Underneath, it’s built on a dedicated EV skateboard platform, which is a fancy way of saying the floor is flat and the wheelbase is long for the car’s size, so the back seat actually fits adults. There’s a 70-litre front boot as well as the usual one out back, which is the kind of practical, unglamorous detail I appreciate more with every passing year of loading groceries, lifestyle accessories and the various paraphernalia that comes with having a family of five humans and two dogs.
Power comes from a single motor doing 85 kW and 150 Nm, which won’t trouble anyone at a traffic light but feels perfectly urgent enough in traffic thanks to instant torque. Claimed 0-100 is a leisurely 11.5 seconds, though it never feels quite that slow from the driver’s seat (but also, who’s doing 100km sprints in an EV?). It’s rear-wheel drive too, which is unusual at this price point, and it gives the car a nicely planted, low-centre-of-gravity feel through town. Ride quality around the city is polished, but can feel a little less so on highways. It’s a good reminder that this was built for suburbs, not speed. Above 100 km/h the range starts disappearing quickly, and the electronically limited 130 km/h top speed tells you exactly what this car thinks of long-distance ambitions. On range: Geely claims 325 km from the 39.4 kWh battery. This is not a car for a long road trip. It is very much a car for daily driving and the daily commute that lives comfortably under 150 km.
Which is really the point. The E2 isn’t trying to be a lifestyle statement or your only car. It’s an appliance, and I mean that as praise. It makes the most sense for someone who already has a second, more capable vehicle for road trips and camping gear, and just wants something cheap, quiet and low-drama for the daily grind, or for a smaller household prepared to plan longer trips around charging stops. It also assumes you can charge at home; without that, the case weakens considerably.
A few honest caveats, because no review is complete without them: there’s no spare wheel, just a repair kit, which matters more here than in most markets given our roads, and parts availability for a new-to-SA brand is still unproven. However, Geely’s backing it with an 8-year/200 000 km battery warranty and a 5-year service plan, which goes a long way toward settling first-EV nerves.
At R339 900 for the Aspire and R389 900 for the Apex, the E2 undercuts almost everything else electric in the country. It won’t turn heads outside a school gate, but it doesn’t need to. If we were in the market for a small EV for driving to the shops and some school runs, we’d seriously consider the E2.