A proper mattress, fresh sheets, pillows, a duvet and climate control. As festival accommodation goes, our Geely EX5 looked considerably more inviting than a tent.
There was just one thing we hadn’t properly accounted for: fitting both of us inside it.
We were heading to CarFest at Silverstone, where the plan was simple enough. We would drive there in an electric Geely EX5, enjoy the festival, make a respectable dent in the Champagne supplies, and then spend the night sleeping in the back of the car.
The EX5 seemed a sensible choice. We reviewed it earlier this year and found it spacious, comfortable, well equipped and entirely competent, but also entirely uninteresting and forgettable.
But there’s spacious when you’re sitting in a car, and then there’s spacious when you’re trying to share it with your husband and a duvet.
The first part of the plan went extremely well. There were lots of cars, great racing, and endless retail opportunities. In the evening, the music kicked off. Sophie Ellis-Bextor was excellent, and Gok Wan — now seemingly a DJ — was, somewhat unexpectedly, enormous fun.
And the headline act, Jessie J… wasn’t. She spent much of the show complaining that people only knew one of her songs, and gave the impression she really didn’t want to be there. Perhaps it really is about the cha-ching cha-ching after all.
After the music finished and the bar closed, we wandered back to our temporary home for the night, had a couple more drinks, and inspected what Geely had done to turn the EX5 into a bedroom.
The rear seats had been folded flat, an inflatable car mattress filled the available space, and proper sheets, pillows and a duvet had been added. There was even lighting, earplugs and eye masks.
It looked remarkably inviting, but that was rather misleading.
The Geely EX5 actually makes quite a clever camper
Before getting to the uncomfortable bit — and there was quite a lot of uncomfortable bit — the EX5 itself handled the camping side of things surprisingly well.
There’s a dedicated Camping Mode that lets you secure the car while keeping systems like the climate control running. That meant we could lock ourselves in for the night, set a comfortable temperature and leave the car to look after us.
Even better, when the temperature needed changing, there was no fumbling around in the dark trying to find the touchscreen. A quick voice command adjusted the cabin temperature without either of us having to emerge from underneath the duvet.
We also used the EX5’s vehicle-to-load capability to power equipment overnight. In plain English, that means using the car’s drive battery to supply electricity to things you’d normally plug into a socket.
It’s one of those EV features that sounds vaguely gimmicky until you actually need electricity somewhere miles away from a plug socket – or you’ve got a power cut at home – at which point it becomes extraordinarily useful.
The climate control also meant there was none of the damp, steamed-up-window misery normally associated with sleeping inside a car.
Unfortunately, that meant anybody walking past could see straight in. Given what Phil was wearing to sleep in, I suspect that was considerably more traumatic for them than it was for us.
There was just one small problem with camping in a Geely
The EX5 isn’t big enough. Or, perhaps more accurately, we aren’t small enough.
Phil, our Average Joe
, is 5ft 10in and I’m 5ft 7in, so there isn’t a huge difference between us. Neither of us could properly stretch out once the seats were folded down.
One person sleeping diagonally would probably have been absolutely fine, but two people required the sort of spatial negotiation normally associated with fitting furniture into a studio flat.
Legs went sideways. Knees appeared in unexpected places. Turning over became a joint planning exercise. There are footprints on the rear window.
At various points during the night, one of us seemed to be occupying the other’s allocated section of the mattress, although neither of us could confidently establish whose section was whose.
Did we get a good night’s sleep? No. Neither of us can remember a worse night’s sleep, and being slightly shorter certainly didn’t spare me. If anything, I came off worse.
The frustrating thing was that everything else worked. The cabin stayed quiet, the temperature remained comfortable, the mattress was soft enough, and the EX5’s battery happily provided electricity all night.
We simply needed the car to be 30cm longer.
Then the sun came up
There’s another disadvantage to sleeping in a modern SUV: glass. There’s lots and lots of glass. Even the roof is made of glass. And once daylight arrived at Silverstone, it arrived enthusiastically. The windows that make the cabin feel pleasantly airy during normal use instead let light stream into our little bedroom.
Window blinds went straight onto the list for next time.
The lack of privacy became particularly apparent when it was time to get dressed. There isn’t really enough room inside an EX5 to stand up, obviously. Changing clothes required lying down, crouching and twisting sideways, while several hundred other campers wandered around outside.
Watching Phil attempt this added some entertainment to an otherwise exhausting morning.
Discretion was attempted, but discretion was not achieved.
So, can you go camping in a Geely EX5?
In finding out that we could, we had to pause and ask whether we should.
For one person, it could work rather well. Fold the seats down, sleep diagonally, and you’ve got climate control, electricity, shelter, security and considerably better sound insulation than any tent we’ve ever owned.
For two people, it becomes rather more intimate than intended, but knock six inches off each of us and we’d probably have slept quite happily.
Despite the appalling night’s sleep, though, we loved it.
There’s something gloriously silly about climbing into the back of a perfectly respectable electric SUV after a festival, drinking whisky under a duvet and asking the car to turn the heating down before going to sleep.
It also showed off parts of the EX5 that a normal road test never really would.
Having electricity available is genuinely useful. Camping Mode works brilliantly. Voice control makes much more sense when you’re lying horizontally underneath bedding. And the EX5’s quiet, comfortable cabin becomes rather appealing once it’s pretending to be a very, very small hotel room.
It just needs a slightly bigger bed.
Perhaps Geely’s forthcoming larger Monjaro SUV will solve that particular problem. Although next time we’re bringing window blinds. And maybe a tent.
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