Geely has officially launched its largest SUV yet, the Geely Haoyue. At launch, the Haoyue is offered as a 7-seater while a 5-seater configuration will be available in the future.

Visually, the Haoyue takes after the Geely ICON’s boxy silhouette. Familiar cues include the expanding cosmos grille, Geely inscription across the tailgate, and slim LED taillamps. Note that the rear quarter glass is fairly big to give the 3rd-row passengers an airy impression inside.

The Haoyue aims squarely against the likes of the Toyota Highlander (China-market), Kia Sorento, Mazda CX-8, and Hyundai Santa Fe. With a wheelbase of 2,815 mm, the Haoyue has quite a substantial footprint.

Geely claims that the Haoyue has an impressive interior space utilisation rate of 69% (the amount of usable cabin space for occupants) – which is 6% more than the industry average. This was achieved by closely referencing Honda’s interior packaging principle of ‘Man Maximum-Machine minimum’.

One of the major highlights of the Haoyue is that the rear seats are able to fold completely flat and can fit items up to 2.2 metres in length. Geely says you can easily fit a queen-size bed – heck, I reckon 2 people can sleep comfortably at the back of the Haoyue.

There is a total of 42 storage spaces in the Haoyue, spread across all three rows. In the boot, there is a flexible storage compartment which you can change its arrangement to fit your storage needs.

A lot of thought has been given to ingress and egress as the Haoyue only has a ground clearance of 190 mm. That means the Haoyue is easier to step in and out of than the Honda CR-V (196 mm).

The cabin design also resembles the ICON, except it’s a fair bit more premium in the Haoyue. Key items include a 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster, floating touchscreen GKUI19 infotainment system, PM2.5 cabin air filtration system, and a massive 60-inch panoramic glass roof.

There are two powertrain options available for the Haoyue – the JLE-4G18TD 1.8-litre turbocharged 4-cylinder (184 PS/300 Nm) seen in the Proton X70 CKD and the JLH-3G15TD 1.5-litre turbocharged 3-cylinder (177 PS/255 Nm) as seen in the Geely Binyue (Proton X50).

Both powertrain options are paired to the 7-speed wet dual-clutch transmission to send drive exclusively to the front wheels. Geely claims a fuel consumption figure of 7.8L/100 km for the1.8 turbo.

The Geely Haoyue is not officially on sale yet, but Chinese media estimates the new SUV to have a starting price of RMB 150k (RM 92k). What do you think? Should Proton offer a 7-seater SUV to the Malaysian market?

Image credit: auto.163.com