A Shining Beacon Of Adequacy

Haval H6

- Daniel Gardner

STEP INSIDE the spacious cabin of Haval’s midsize SUV, slide into the generous, leather-look seats and hit the keyless start button and you’re met with a pair of high-resolution displays... and a sneaking suspicion the Chinese carmaker took a long, hard look at the technological approach of Tesla when designing its new model.

The crisply rendered central 10.3-inch screen offers access to an impressive array of technology and applications. The second 10.3-inch screen forms the driver’s instrument cluster and features a digital speedo, tachometer and even a real-time vehicle/lane position feature that’s very similar to Tesla’s innovation.

The result is an incredibly clean and tidy interior and, with just seven switches on the entire centre portion of the dashboard, the Tesla similarities continue. Actually, one or two functions – such as seat heaters – are buried a little too deeply in digital menus and we’d prefer just a handful more buttons even if it did partly spoil the spartan layout. As our test car was the mid-range Lux H6 variant, in addition to heated seats we were treated to electric seat adjustment for the driver, a leather steering wheel, keyless entry, metallic paint, 18-inch alloy wheels, and Apple CarPlay – but not Android Auto.

And that’s all before you get to the impressive and extensive safety and driver assistance suite. All H6s get autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection, lane-keep assist, blind-spot and driver fatigue monitoring, speed sign recognition, a reversing camera and rear parking radar.