Skywell BE11 review

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Chinese electric crossover has been revised ahead of its arrival in the UK. Has it been brought up to scratch?

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Before we delve into the merits of the Skywell BE11 as a car, let’s consider where its maker comes from.

Skywell emerged in China in 2017 as a joint venture between one of the world's largest consumer electronics groups, Skyworth, and electric bus maker Nanjing Golden Dragon.

Its cars are now being brought here by Gloucestershire-based importer Innovation Automotive.

The BE11 is being introduced as not only Skywell's first car but also its attempt to grab a share of the UK fleet market and rival everything from the Ford Mustang Mach-E to the Skoda Enyaq and Nissan Ariya to the KGM Torres EVX.

We initially drove a prototype and, truth be told, we didn't much like it. The steering was too light, the infotainment system was near-unfathomable, the speedometer only showed in KPH and the brakes were spongy.

But Skywell has since fitted the BE11 with a new BYD-sourced motor, reduced the wheel size from 20in to 19in, reconfigured the suspension for comfort and downsized the infotainment screen by 2.2in so that users can see the 'start/stop' button once hidden behind it.

This, then, is our chance to drive the finished product and find out if this new player has a fighting chance of success in the UK.

The Skywell BE11 range at a glance

The BE11 range is very simple, because there's only one trim level. Two different battery sizes are available: a 72kWh unit offering 248 miles of range and an 86kWh Long Range unit that yields 304 miles. 

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Both are nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) in their chemistry and sit within the car's wheelbase.

The single motor powers the front wheels, making 201bhp and 236lb ft of torque, which is good for a 0-62mph time of 9.6sec and a top speed of 93mph. 

All cars sit on passive suspension with a torsion beam at the rear and there's no option of four-wheel drive.

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DESIGN & STYLING

Skywell BE11 side static

Measuring 4720mm long, 1908mm wide and 1696mm tall, the BE11 is around 100mm wider than the Mustang Mach-E and Ariya. It's certainly one of the largest cars in this class - and it feels quite big on the road. 

There are two ways of looking at its design. The lack of a grille, boxy headlights and slab-sided proportions make it look anonymous, but it’s also inoffensive and simple.

You could argue that most other Chinese electric cars are designed in a similar, featureless fashion anyway, but we would have liked to see some more distinctive design cues, especially from a box-fresh brand.

The ‘razor’ LED headlights help its cause somewhat, as do the chrome accents and large (19in) diamond-cut alloy wheels.

Move to the rear and, in typical EV fashion, there’s a full-width LED light bar with illuminated brand lettering.

Construction is conventional by class standards, with steel body panels fixed onto a steel monocoque chassis.

INTERIOR

Skywell BE11 interior

One benefit of its size in comparison with its competitors is the amount of interior space on offer, and as this is the sort of car you will buy for its size, let's start there.

For rear occupants, the BE11 excels. There's a limousine-like spaciousness back there that's missing in most of its key rivals, with sufficient leg room for anyone of any size and just enough head room for people over 6ft tall.

It's the same story up front: the standard-fit panoramic sunroof makes the cabin feel light and airy, and the generously-sized footwells mean your legs have a chance to stretch out.

The 467-litre boot is only average for the class; the Enyaq gets 585 litres and the Ariya 466 litres.

There are plenty of storage compartments and cubby holes, however, and overall fit and finish is passable, with soft-touch materials lining the front and rear door cards and dashboard.

Skywell boasts about its cars having "industrial heritage" and thus the quality to back that up, but you don't have to look very hard to find evidence of frivolity. The rose-tint finish of the door handles and trim pieces looks tacky, the wood veneers feel as fake as they look and, on our brand-new test car, some of the plastic surfacing was already scratched.

Which brings us to another less successful attribute: the infotainment system. It runs from a large 12.8in touchscreen, which you get as standard alongside a 12.3in digital instrumentation display. Evidence of new-brand weirdness arises from the moment you turn it on, when you're greeted by a message in a Chinese language alongside another saying “Good afternoon , Dear User”.

Dig a little deeper and you will spot more bad punctuation, alongside horrible graphics and haphazard menu structures. The actual definition of the display is pretty good, but the way in which buttons and menus are presented is not.

Nor is its functionality. It took us three attempts and two phones to connect to Apple CarPlay, and there's a frustrating amount of lag once your phone is connected to it. 

Skywell has seen fit to omit a physical volume button, instead burying it in the touchscreen. The only issue with this is that, when connected to Apple CarPlay, the adjuster is five clicks away. And because CarPlay removes the permanent bar for the air conditioning controls, those are three clicks away.

You will likely need to use smartphone mirroring for much of the time, too, because the native sat-nav system (called TurboDog 9) isn't fitted to early cars. Later models will have it, but the system can't be retrofitted, in spite of the application appearing on the screen.

Because early BE11s underwent their European type approval before July 2024 and thus didn't have to comply with GSR2 regulations, they will not be fitted with ADAS. This means that you can expect a safety rating of less than five stars if it's ever tested for safety by Euro NCAP. Skywell says it's “looking into” introducing ADAS in the future.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

Skywell BE11 rear three quarter static

With an agreeable 201bhp and 236lb ft, the BE11 isn’t short of power and has enough punch for motorway slip roads and overtaking. It's also quite smooth when accelerating, and its reserves are metered out evenly as your speed climbs.

What's more, you're able to configure the amount of regenerative braking to exactly how you want it using exact percentage increments up to 100%. We reckon 50% is the most natural and intuitive setting.

In spite of this and the new BYD-sourced motor, however, the BE11 is quite a difficult car to drive smoothly. If, for example, you want to accelerate hard towards a gap in traffic or onto a motorway slip road, the front tyres scrabble for traction as its 1.9-tonne weight shifts backwards and the traction control fails to intervene.

Combine this with the fact that the throttle pedal can at times be hard to modulate and there's a consistent delay between you pressing the accelerator and the car doing anything, and you end up with a vehicle that will very quickly make occupants feel carsick. 

You're able to configure the feel of the brake pedal and steering using a number of driving modes. In Comfort, the brakes feel too spongy and require a couple of inches of pedal travel before anything significant happens. Sport helpfully sharpens them up, however, and makes them feel more akin to what we would expect from the class.

Concerningly, in our test car, the brake pedal itself was also loose on its bracket, so it moved around a little under our foot.

RIDE & HANDLING

Skywell BE11 rear right three quarter

You're quickly able to tell that the BE11's suspension has been set up for comfort, because at higher speeds, it can filter out large imperfections and potholes without you really noticing them. There’s a bit of fidgeting here and there on the motorway, but this is also not especially obvious.

Levels of comfort are somewhat curtailed, however, by the amount of wind noise at speed, which leaves you having to raise your voice at passengers who have been drowned out. Road noise is reasonably well subdued, however, and the motor itself is quite quiet under acceleration.

At speeds below 60mph, the BE11's ride quality simply falls apart. There’s a disconcerting buoyancy to its body control, and each time you ride over a lump or bump, there's a noticeable metallic thunk coming from the rear end. Couple this with its inability to maintain good close body control at speed and it falls way short of the dynamic standards of its established rivals.

This may not be a car for hustling around corners, but that doesn’t mean you should find yourself struggling to stay sitting upright when turning at speed. In fact, its unsettling levels of pitch, heave and roll make themselves known at pretty much any speed.

Along with the brakes, you can configure the weight of the steering according to individual modes: Standard, Comfort and Sport. However, we detected no difference in feel between each of them.

The steering itself is disconcertingly light, to the point that you're completely isolated from anything the front wheels are doing. This would somewhat make sense if the car were geared towards customers living in built-up areas, but it does little to inspire confidence and means you have to guess how much lock to use in a given corner. 

It torque-steers under load, especially if you accelerate over a rough surface, and there’s a strange and unintuitive springiness to the way it self-centres.

One genuinely useful feature is the rather confusingly named Worm mode, which allows the car to creep forward in heavy traffic without you touching the accelerator.

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

Skywell BE11 front three quarter tracking

Skywell prides itself on having a competitive aftersales package that includes cheap servicing costs and an ever-expanding UK dealer network (it hopes to have around 50 operational by the end of 2025). 

It says these combine to make for good residual values, with BE11s expected to hold 43% of their value after three years or 30,000 miles. This compares with 42% for the Subaru Solterra and BYD Atto 3 and 38% for the Mustang Mach-E.

The car has to be serviced once every 12 months or 15,000 miles and Skywell offers the option of a three-year service plan.

As standard, the BE11 gets a seven-year/100,000-mile warranty, while the battery gets an eight-year/155,000-mile one, which is one of the more competitive offers in the class, even beating the Nissan Ariya's.

In terms of efficiency, Skywell claims 3.5mpkWh for the 86kWh Long Range version, which is fairly competitive, but over a 50-mile route encompassing motorways, A-roads and towns, we averaged just over 3.0mpkWh.

VERDICT

Skywell BE11 verdict

On the evidence of the BE11, Skywell has a lot more work to do if it's to have any success in the UK.

Make no mistake, this car is generously equipped, competitively priced and quite comfortable at higher speeds, and the competitive warranties will be a clear selling point for the fleet market at which it's targeted. But the overwhelming impression is that it still isn't quite the finished product. 

The faults we found with the prototype haven't been correctly addressed this time around. Its disconcerting steering, dreadful infotainment system, dull looks, only-average efficiency and poor rolling refinement will make it a frustrating and wearisome car to live with.

If, then, you have a budget of around £40,000 for an electric family car and you want everything the BE11 offers and more, you're better off with something like a Renault Scenic E-Tech, Skoda Enyaq or Kia EV6, or indeed something from the second-hand market.

Jonathan Bryce

Jonathan Bryce
Title: Editorial Assistant

Jonathan is an editorial assistant working with Autocar. He has held this position since March 2024, having previously studied at the University of Glasgow before moving to London to become an editorial apprentice and pursue a career in motoring journalism. 

His role at work involves running Autocar's sister title Move Electric, which is most notably concerned with electric cars. His other roles include writing new and updating existing new car reviews, and appearing on Autocar's social media channels including Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.