Maxus turns up the style with this lower-mid-sized model, the eDeliver 5. Jonathan Crouch checks out what's on offer.

Background

'The Buzz stops here'. So says Chinese maker Maxus, referring to the impact its mid-sized eDeliver 5 electric van is going to make on sales of its biggest Volkswagen rival, the ID.Buzz cargo. Over-ambitious? Here, we'll see. The Buzz is supplementary to the small, medium and large-sized vans in the VW Commercial range. As is the eDeliver 5 which (as its name suggests) is positioned between the eDeliver 3 and the eDeliver 7 in a niche you wouldn't have thought needed filling. But then again, some businesses might like the idea of an electric LCV that's big enough to be big and small enough to be small. The Buzz doesn't quite meet that remit because of its high price and relatively restricted cargo area but on paper, the eDeliver 5 promises more. Let's take a closer look.

Driving Experience

There's a single powertrain option here which sees a 161bhp motor drive the front wheels with 240Nm of torque. This is energised by a 64kWh battery pack supposed to be WLTP-rated for 208 miles, though we doubt if you'd get close to that with a full load in the back. The EV range figure drops to 190 miles with the high roof version. For perspective, that's about the same as a Ford E-Transit Custom (209 miles) but some way off a VW ID.Buzz Cargo (276 miles). Three brake regen settings are available, with the fiercest offering almost a 'one-pedal' set-up where you hardly ever need to touch the brake. Don't expect the kind of really polished ride and handling package you'd get in those rival VW or Ford models, but that won't be a deal-breaker for many likely operators. The eDeliver 5 should better the crude ride of earlier Maxus models though, thanks to its purpose-built MILA all-electric platform (the same as is used by the eDeliver 7). Mindful that the eDeliver 5 will be used on the highway as well as the town, Maxus has been ramping up its camera drive assist tech. Features available here include a front collision warning system, lane departure warning, lane keep assist and an emergency lane keeping assist system.

Design and Build

If you squint a bit, you might see shades of ID.Buzz in the eDeliver 5, but you'd have to be squinting quite a lot and you'd probably have to be looking at a model with the two-tone paint colour option. There are C-shaped LED headlights and, at the rear, a stack of lozenge-shaped tail lights at the edge of the asymmetric twin doors. Body length is 4,800mm. A long wheelbase body shape option would have helped this Maxus in comparison with its German rival. You can't have that but there is a high roof version, something the Buzz Cargo can't offer. Inside, the car-like interior of that VW and other segment choices is replaced by a more basic-feeling cabin with shiny brittle plastics and a 12.3-inch central infotainment screen that controls almost everything. There's voice control and 'Apple CarPlay' and 'Android Auto' smartphone-mirroring, as you'd hope. Through the thin wheel, you view a smaller screen for the instruments, a lot of the space of which is wasted by an unnecessary image of the vehicle. This 7-inch display shows a digital speedo, drive mode graphics and your chosen brake regen setting. There's the usual two-person passenger bench seat, as is the class norm. But not a great deal of cab storage space. No glovebox or proper door pockets; just an overhead shelf, a net on each door and a couple of cup holders.

Market and Model

Prices for the eDeliver 5 are pitched from around £34,000 excluding VAT, but that falls to around £29,000 once the £5,000 UK government electric vehicle grant has been subtracted from the asking price, making this one of the better value mid-sized all-electric vans on the market. It's about £10,000 less than the larger eDeliver 7 and not much more than what Maxus wants for the smaller eDeliver 3 - and you're getting a much better product in return. To give you some competitor perspective, at the time of launch, an eDeliver 5 undercut a VW ID.Buzz Cargo by £5,625 and a Ford E-Transit Custom by a substantial £9,000. Whichever eDeliver 5 model you choose, it'll come with plenty of equipment. You can tick off LED headlights, air conditioning, adaptive cruise control, a 360-degree camera system, a 7-inch instrument cluster display, a PVC and wood cargo bay floor and rear parking sensors. A 12.3-inch centre touchscreen's provided with wireless 'Apple CarPlay' and 'Android Auto' smartphone connectivity. As for safety stuff, well there's an autonomous emergency braking system, a front collision warning system, lane departure warning, lane keep assist and an emergency lane keeping assist system. Plus there's tyre pressure monitoring and fatigue driving monitoring, plus an E-Call system which alerts you if any of the airbags go off. There are twin front airbags - and side airbags too. As a result, the eDeliver 5 gained a Platinum rating from Euro NCAP, scoring an 82% safety score in testing.

Practicalities and Costs

As we told you in our 'Design' section, there is only one length of eDeliver 5 available, but a choice of roof heights. Thanks to a 3,100mm wheelbase length that's significantly more generous than a comparably-sized compact van, there's a lot of cargo space for the money, with a maximum loading length across the PVC and wood floor of 2,653mm and load volumes of 6.6m3 and 7.6m3 for the two versions. There's 1,704mm of cargo area width and cargo bay height of either 1,455mm or 1,675mm, depending on your roof choice. The payload figure's quite impressive for an EV too - up to 1,200kg. All of these figures comfortably beat not only a VW ID.Buzz Cargo but also the segment leader, Ford's E-Transit Custom. In comparable L1H1 form, that Ford has 2,559mm of load area length, 5.8m3 of capacity and 1,110kg of payload. Towing capacity is 1,500kg. This electric van's 64kWh battery has a 42-minute DC charge time for 10-80% battery charging. Or can be 5-100% AC-charged in 7.5 hours. All Maxus vehicles come with a five year warranty or 125,000 miles of cover and include five years roadside assistance cover as standard.

Summary

To dismiss this Maxus as a Chinese copy of an ID.Buzz would be slightly unfair. It's more than that and is a much more affordable and practical choice than its VW rival. We think it would have been better if Maxus had dispensed with the Buzz comparisons and simply highlighted the fact that in many ways, the eDeliver 5 is a better value and more practical choice than the UK's best-selling medium-sized electric van, the Ford E-Transit Custom. Objectively, the Ford (like the VW) is in many ways a more complete product, but this Maxus is so much cheaper and sensibly-sized that you'd be foolish to ignore it, even if you weren't swayed by its style-conscious looks - which you might be. If you've been waiting for a Chinese electric van that's as complete a proposition as a rival European product, then this still isn't quite it. But it's close. Close enough to mean you really ought to take a careful look at it.