Styling
At more than 4.7 metres long, 1.9 metres wide and nearly 1.7 metres tall, the Skywell BE11 is a large SUV, despite being classified as C-segment. It's also a visually anonymous thing, deliberately played safe to make it as inoffensive to as many people as possible. That aesthetic blandness might actually annoy some observers, but there's nothing about it that's really clunking or an obviously slavish copy of some established manufacturer's product. Its most distinctive features, if that's the right adjective, are the smoothed-off front end, the 'razor' LED headlights and that thing which looks like a full-width light strip at the back, although we don't think it illuminates. Either way, the BE11 is perfectly OK to look at, if almost instantly forgettable.
Interior
This is one of the strongest points of the Skywell BE11. Material quality is surprisingly good throughout most of the interior, although if you want to go searching for them then sub-par plastic surfaces can be sought out. Up top there's some passable 'wood' trim, a load of rose-gold detailing, and the Alcantara/faux-leather seats look pretty nice with their contrast piping and feel decent to sit on, although the driving position is awkwardly high-set, which of course suits SUV buyers who want to feel they're above other traffic to start with, but it means you feel perched on the BE11, rather than sat
in it.
That aside, the doors close with a nice, solid 'thunk', rather than a tinny clang, and digitally the Skywell seems, on first glance, to be up with the pace. There's a 12.8-inch main touchscreen for the infotainment, which purportedly supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto wirelessly, while a 12.3-inch LCD instrument cluster is also present and correct. Buyers will further enjoy a wireless smartphone charging pad, which is nevertheless in a daft place on a lower, hard-to-access level of the centre console, and a Metz 8.1-speaker (the main eight in-cabin speakers and the boot-mounted subwoofer) premium sound system.
However, even here, chinks in whatever armour the BE11 has begin to appear, because that 12.8-inch infotainment system is not great, and that's something of an understatement. It responds fine and has some nice-looking photo imagery for its presentation screens, but once you start delving into it, it becomes a right old mess. Some of the submenus are confusing, the graphics are all over the place and not always sized appropriately to be easily used on the move, and the proprietary 'TurboDog9' navigation refused to work in the UK. It has also been reported that the Apple CarPlay link-up isn't always as straightforward as it should be, although as we used Android Auto (no comment) we can't confirm that - and Android worked fine wirelessly.
Practicality
Again, Skywell manages to do some impressive stuff here... and then something utterly baffling that undoes much of the good work it has laid down in the first place. So in terms of rear legroom, the BE11 is vast. The SUV's big body and 2.8-metre-long wheelbase adds up to the sort of second-row passenger space that wouldn't disgrace a
Skoda Superb, while a flat floor and a wide bench suggest that three adults could happily sit there side-by-side. The boot, measuring 467 litres, is a good enough size and it is accessed by a standard-fit powered tailgate with a 'kick-to-open' function, so that's handy for families.
But when it comes to outright cargo capacity in two-seat form, the Skywell's 1,141 litres looks meagre for this class of car. That might be because the Chinese firm has only measured the load volume up to the window line, yet that oversight is as nothing to the cumbersome way you have to fold the 60:40-split rear backrests down. Skywell is proud to say they lie flat, and they do - but only if you move the
entire cushion of the rear bench's base out of the way first. This is a two-handed job, minimum, and it's only clipped in flimsily on each side. However, the bigger issue is that there's a clunking great electrical connector underneath the squab which also needs uncoupling before you can finally fold the bench out of the way and get the seatbacks to lie flat. Honda's Magic Seats, this arrangement surely ain't, and it's nowhere near as convenient as a family SUV like this needs to be. In fact, it feels deliberately obstructive. Also, the bench squab takes up all the rear footwell space when it's tipped forward, so you can't put any shopping or other items there as a result. Poor.
Performance
Skywell sourced the BE11's solitary front-mounted motor from BYD, but for some reason didn't bother to get that company's highly regarded lithium iron phosphate (LFP) 'Blade' battery pack to go with it, instead choosing to source the Standard Range's power unit of 72kWh from some manufacturer called Funeng and the bigger 86kWh item of the Long Range from Weineng. Both these batteries, incidentally, are not LFPs, nor even the commonly used lithium-ion (li-ion) units, but instead have nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cells.
The carmaker reckons NMCs are better at hitting (or getting nearer to) their WLTP claimed range figures in inclement weather, as they're less susceptible to the cold than either LFPs or li-ions, but that's not much of a comfort when the on-paper range figures are, at best, average - and could even be said to be outright disappointing. The BE11 Standard Range, for instance, is said to only be able to go up to 248 miles on a full charge of its 72kWh pack, when any Stellantis EV with the much-smaller 51kWh unit will do about the same distance. And when Volkswagen can now get 365 miles from a dual-motor, 205kW (340hp) version of the
ID.7 when fitted with an 86kWh battery, why does the BE11 Long Range - with its relatively meek 150kW (204hp)/320Nm single motor - only manage a maximum of 304 miles?
Not that any of this matters too much, of course. Because, NMC battery or otherwise, you'll spend most of your time in the Skywell BE11 fruitlessly frittering away what few vestiges of power and torque the SUV has in frustrating wheelspin. We haven't driven a car so hopelessly traction-limited as this since the turn of the millennium, and one peek at the rubber used on the car's 19-inch alloys is enough to understand why. It runs on, and we're not making this up, Giti GitiControl P10s, which are apparently from a tyre company which specialises in supplying the Chinese commercial vehicle industry, specifically trucks. Ultra-hard, cheap tyres might be ideal in terms of durability for some old HGV smoker that's having to haul aggregates for thousands of miles at a time through remote Chinese scenery, but they have no place on an SUV that is ambitiously (and misguidedly) targeting the upmarket sector.
With very, very little provocation at all, the BE11 will needlessly whirr up its front wheels if you're even a modicum too eager with the overly light and inconsistent throttle. It does it out of T-junctions if you're trying to smartly take a gap in traffic. It does it coming off roundabouts if you see your exit and have the barefaced temerity to accelerate before you're in a perfectly straight line. It does it if you want to step off the line reasonably quickly at a set of traffic lights. In short, it wheelspins everywhere; there's not a cat in hell's chance you'd ever get the quoted and rather feeble 0-62mph time of 9.6 seconds out of the Skywell, because it simply does not have anything like the tractive levels required to do such a thing.
Something else that isn't fast, either, is charging times. A best of 80kW DC is below average in this day and age, especially for something with far more than 50kWh of battery installed in its base, and is why Skywell slyly tries to make the 45-minute 'best' DC time look comparable with established rivals' capabilities. But the devil is in the detail, because while almost every other manufacturer quotes a 10-80 per cent charging time on DC, Skywell goes with 20-70 per cent. So if you actually
do want 10-80 per cent in the BE11, it is going to take more like an hour than it is 45 minutes, and that's if you even get a solid 80kW charge from it throughout. Not even the BE11's 11kW standard AC rate makes up for this lacklustre DC effort.
Ride & Handling
Good lord. If the performance is bad, the ride and handling are both shocking and appalling. We have not driven a car anything like as dreadfully set up as the Skywell BE11 in the 21st century, and we'd have to go back to stuff made deeper into the 20th-century past to get even close to the Chinese SUV's road-holding 'manners', if they can even be called such a thing.
The suspension achieves the rare feat of doing both ride comfort
and handling atrociously. The loose and slovenly springs and dampers might promise a smooth ride, especially on the Gitis' generous 50-profile sidewalls, but while the BE11 doesn't smash and thump over surfaces, the isolation of its suspension is poor so you nevertheless hear a lot of what the wheels and chassis are up to, and the body control is nothing short of comical. In the wake of only modest compressions taken at no more than 40-50mph, the shell of the Skywell bobs and weaves and jiggles about wretchedly. It's almost seasick-inducing, and it doesn't help that there's almost a constant see-sawing longitudinal action to the way the BE11 covers ground, as if the two axles weren't connected to (or even aware of) each other in the slightest.
Those GitiControl P10s generate an awful amount of chatter at even 50mph and wind noise isn't that well damped either, so while the Skywell is not attempting to be sporty in the slightest, it most certainly isn't in the least bit pleasurable or nice to travel in at more modest road speeds either. But the ride quality/rolling refinement blend, while pathetic by modern standards, is as nothing compared to the handling.
Which is, and we are loath to say this but we have to report as we find, borderline dangerous. The steering is so breathtakingly light and feel-free that it's hard to imagine there's any physical link at all between the circular device the driver is holding in their hands and then the front wheels of the BE11. There are three modes, these called Comfort, Normal and Sport. Only use the latter of these on public roads. It's still comprehensively terrible, but it's ever so marginally weightier and more responsive than the other two, and the Comfort setting is absolutely, without any shadow of a doubt, the worst steering set-up we've ever driven.
That sloppy body control we mentioned earlier results in stupid levels of roll, pitch and dive if you start to get even remotely adventurous with your corner speeds in the Skywell - and we're only really talking about the 30-40mph zone here, no higher - and then, just to cap off this abject dynamic display with the crowning 'glory' of the BE11's kinematics, the final horror is the brakes. The pedal feel (which is a complete misuse of the word 'feel') is objectively horrendous. You can press it right down to the floor of the Skywell with the vehicle standing still, experiencing a nasty, spring action to it if you do, but when you're on the move there's about an inch of dead travel at the top of the pedal's movement, before an ineffectual amount of braking power comes to the fore. Two overarching settings here are Normal - don't use this one, it feels like all the brake fluid has been boiled away and you're in a runaway train - or Sport, and you'll have to deploy the latter if you want to feel in any marginal way safe when you're decelerating, but it pays you off by bringing the car to an abrupt, jerky and unpleasant halt as it comes down to walking pace and then a complete stop.
Oh, and there are 100 different levels of regenerative braking. One. Hundred. And not one of them, not even 100% (as it is marked), brings about one-pedal driving. Absolutely gobsmacking. It is, by some huge amount of distance, the worst car we've ever driven professionally, and so painfully far off the prevailing class standards of today that it's not even funny. And when you couple together the totally inert steering, the woeful body control, the minimal levels of grip and traction the tyres afford, and the ghastly brakes, that's why we think it's dangerous; truthfully, on a cold, frosty day with slick road surfaces, even taking mild S-bends at less than 40mph in the BE11 was a hair-raising experience, because it wasn't entirely clear if it was going to wobble its way through the corners and out the other side, or simply slide off into the scenery at the first possible opportunity. Just dire.
Value
Skywell is trying the old trick that, a differing amount of years ago in each case, saw all of Skoda, Hyundai, Kia and even MG transform their images in the eyes of the buying public, from brands with a less-than-stellar reputation to ones which saw customers more willing to take on their products: and that trick is that the BE11 offers lots of kit, for not a lot of cash. So there are many things to commend with the Skywell, such as it comes with a 360-degree camera, an opening panoramic sunroof and the uprated Metz sound system as standard, items which are all commonly cost options on similar rivals. It also comes in one 'flat' specification with no extras at all (not even metallic paint, although there are only four body colours - which are white, grey, black and dark blue; sigh), meaning your only decision is whether to go for the £36,995 Standard Range or the £39,995 Long Range.
But, once more, we still must cite some major negatives. Such as, for all the apparent generosity of kit the Skywell has, neither heated seats nor a heated steering wheel are fitted - and, as we've just said, you can't pay to have them added either. And when it comes to advanced driver assist safety (ADAS) features, there's a smattering of technologies... but, inexplicably, no lane-keep assist nor lane-departure warning. Now, we know what you're going to say: ADAS is annoying anyway, most people switch these features straight off. And that's true, but cars without LKA or LDW fitted as standard in 2024 get a zero-star Euro NCAP rating automatically. And if you're trying to conquest a brand-new market with your product, is substandard safety really going to be a strong selling point? No, it isn't. Perhaps good news, then, that the BE11 is unlikely to be crash-tested, because the company is only aiming to sell 600-800 in the UK throughout the entire year of 2025, meaning the volumes are low enough that it can avoid Euro NCAP's stringent examination.
Verdict
Skywell listed three electric SUVs it sees as competitors for the BE11 and, frankly, it's insulting to even dare mention them in the same breath. But if this upstart Chinese company thinks this diabolical effort at an SUV is in any way a match for the likes of the
Ford Mustang Mach-E, the
Skoda Enyaq or even the rather underwhelming (in its own way
Nissan Ariya, then it is living in cloud-cuckoo land.
There are a few tiny glimmers of hope for the representatives of Skywell in the UK, and they are these. One, several of the truly worst aspects of the car - the grip, the traction, the rolling refinement and the steering feel - would probably be improved no end by the simple expedient of removing the fatally flawed Giti GitiControl tyres and replacing them with a decent set of rubber from a leading European or Japanese manufacturer. And two, the Chinese car companies have a track record of quickly improving their products if they come in for stern criticism.
Well, here's some of that for the firm - as it stands, despite a reasonable-looking purchase price, lots of interior space and a fairly comprehensive kit list (some notable equipment absences notwithstanding), everything else about the Skywell BE11 makes it completely and utterly unacceptable in 2024. It needs a serious amount of chassis re-engineering to even get it close to the middle of the present-day electric SUV pack, never mind challenging the leading lights such as an Enyaq. To whomsoever is reading this, our final advice is... avoid the Skywell BE11. Like the plague.
