If you think you can spot a new Chinese car at 50 paces, the Aion V might present a bit of a challenge. It does have a blank front panel like many other Chinese cars but the rest of it looks a bit conventional, European even.

So who, you might ask, is Aion? It’s a brand of the Chinese car manufacturer GAC (Guangzhou Automobile Group), based in Guangzhou, once known as Canton and one of China’s three largest cities. The company has been assembling cars since 1985, when it started building the Peugeot 504 and 505 before collaborating with Honda, Mitsubishi and Toyota. Aion was launched as a separate brand in 2017.

This year, the company launches its first car in the UK, the AION V. Like Chinese van manufacturer Farizon, Aion is being imported and distributed by Jameel Motors, which opens its flagship Aion retail showroom in Slough at the end of May. At the same time, the company will open its first wave of dealers that will grow into a franchised dealer network.

Aion V is a pleasing and fairly soft five-seat SUV design, which the company has chosen to keep as simple as possible. To that end, there is a single specification. You can have any colour you like as long as it’s either Wilderness Sand metallic or Arctic White pearlescent in colour. Alternatively, for an extra £675, you can pick Galaxy Blue, Night Shadow Black or Sea Fluorescent Grey instead.

Standard equipment is impressive, including a full-length panoramic roof, double-glazed front windows, multi-shade ambient lighting, electrically adjustable heated and ventilated front seats and heated reclining rear seats, wireless smartphone charging and wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, a 14.6-inch touchscreen infotainment system featuring the latest ultra-fast Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, with permanent soft keys to adjust climate, seating and volume settings. Then there’s a virtual assistant offering zonal voice control of key settings and functions and a nine-speaker 360-watt premium audio system.

Otherwise, a premium pack adds leather seating, a 6.6-litre CoolHot Box, massage front seats, and a sturdy rear seatback tray table, plus the option to upgrade to an additional exterior paint colour (Holographic Silver at £675), or one of two additional interior colour themes (French Cream or Bright Tan, both available for £195).

If that isn’t tempting enough, Aion has put together its ‘Great 8’ package. This includes eight years’ warranty, eight years’ servicing, eight years of MOT testing and eight years’ roadside assistance. This package is locked into the car’s VIN, which means that each Aion V registered in the UK will be covered by it whether it’s a private purchase or business lease. The package is also fully transferable, so regardless of ownership cycle, the package extends up to the eighth year from first registration.

We asked Lee Giddings, head of sales for Aion in the UK, about the opportunity he sees for fleet business. “With an electric vehicle, salary sacrifice is a big opportunity for us, personal contract hire, business contract hire, particularly if you factor in the Great 8 message as well, it becomes a maintained product, without any additional cost. We’ve been given very strong residual values, so it’s important that any transactional business that we do is done in the right way and that we ensure that those vehicles are circulated back into our network.

“Often, people refer to rental as a dirty word in the industry, but actually, it does get bums on seats, if we’re honest and we do need to build the awareness of the brand. Any business that we do in that area and that’s not to say that we will, it will be done on a manufacturer buy-back basis, protecting residual values and supplying our retailer network with used vehicles as well.”

Then there’s the five-star EuroNCAP rating. Considering the price, equipment levels and Great 8 package that comes too, it is a good pitch to fleet customers. With few dealers on the ground, Aion has formed a partnership with the AA for mobile servicing and access to its network of accredited workshops. The company has also ensured there is a warehouse full of parts before the first customer gets their car, to avoid the parts availability issues that might have affected other emerging brands.

China’s history of building cars to be driven in is reflected in the wide opening (to 89 degrees) rear doors and spacious rear seat. How does it stack up from the driver’s seat?

In short, pretty well. Aion V is a pleasant car to drive with decent road behaviour. The spacious rear compartment and wide opening doors are going to go down well with passengers. Compared with some other products from China, it’s a good car to drive. The soft buttons on the screen do provide a shortcut to some of the functions that are regularly used, such as the heating and ventilation, so you don’t have to find your way through several menus to use the controls. Just the same, a bit of homework is needed to work out how to find the way to some functions. While European manufacturers have reached some kind of consensus about steering wheel controls, Chinese conventions are different and joining in with the European status quo would be helpful. We did try the virtual assistant but didn’t have much luck with it, suggesting that a bit of time getting familiar with it might bring better results.