Geely South Africa has re-entered our local market and decided to take on our 1-Tank Challenge with their latest Geely E5 EM-i to set their place. Geely claimed that the E5 EM-i could do 943 km on a single charge and a single tank of fuel, but at TopGear South Africa, three-digit numbers simply aren’t enough.
In the spirit of giving, we decided to take on the challenge of driving the Geely E5 EM-i into a 4-digit figure, but this time with a twist. Avon laid out the rules clearly: maintain the travelling speed within 20 km/h of the national speed limit at all times, with a trunk full of gifts; spread the festive joy by giving gifts to people you meet along the way; and finally, get to Ballito, KZN before making your return leg via Golden Gate with Clarens as the finish line.
In this 1-Tank challenge our trusty fuel-economy experts, Ntsako and Jordan didn’t have the luxury of maintaining momentum to an end-point as they did in past challenges; instead, they had a battling climb back towards Joburg and a boot full of items that heavily weighed the car down. The odds were stacked against them.
The results might surprise you.
The Geely E5 EM-i managed to achieve a shocking real-world range of 1,170.4 km on a single tank and charge. Is it the biggest figure we’ve managed to get out of a 1-Tank challenge? No. Is it the most challenging 1-Tank challenge we’ve taken on? Absolutely.
