2022 Haval H6 HEV - Enter the CCP

SauRoNZA

SauRoNZA

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Since longterm ownership threads like the solar installations and such seem to be quite popular here and there's a general (potentially) unfounded anti-Chinese sentiment in the Motoring section I figured it would be a good time to do one of these.

So just when these launched my good friend @bokka1 bought one and at the time I was very impressed with the overall very much up to the German standard feeling of the car and the sheer amount of tech that was packed into what was a really affordable package. It was still way more than I wanted to spend on a car and also at the time I wasn't really shopping but it always stayed in the back of my mind.

So why now?
Well my mind is made up that the future is electric, but we are not quite there yet where it makes sense both financially and practically.

So I've done silly stuff like looked at C63 AMG's and decided while it would be awesome to drive, it would be a terrible idea and a deep pit to fall into. How about a BMW i8? That's an electric and a supercar...sort of...but probably also a terrible idea and a true midlife crisis car.

While I'm always casually car shopping, my sister recently looking for a new car and roping me into test drives and opinions was really the final nail in the coffin for me to start seriously looking.

Having gone from a Golf GTI DSG to a manual Kia Picanto (there is a thread here somewhere about that too, but I just can't find it) back in 2018 two non-negotiables were climate control and an automatic as the two most annoying things on the current car. I wanted something with the most features at a reasonable price preferably not too old and still with some warranty remaining.

The only thing that ticked all the boxes was the Opel Mokka GS-line which had every little thing you could imagine including massaging seats and was a pretty solid driver's car on top of that not all that different from the GTI. With Opel's semi-departure from SA they are worth next to nothing second hand and so come in at a reasonable R350-R380k with absolutely nothing else offering a similar spec level for the money. Problem however is finding one and while I was waiting for a silly dealership who advertised it while the dealer principal was driving around with it to source it for a test drive, I ended up driving the normal one just for a general feel at Avis Car Sales in Bellville.

Now I must give huge credit to Lucille at Avis who was very helpful every step of the way and I would gladly have bought a car from her had she been able to source one I was happy with. The game changer for me is that she simply handed over the keys to the Mokka and sent me on my way, which changes the entire experience. As someone who rides bikes it has always baffled me that I can take a 2-wheeled vehicle that costs as much as these cars and falls over by itself and go ride it for hours on end and nobody blinks, but when you test drive a car someone wants to chaperone you around the block and tell you how to drive it in maybe all of 5km and then expects you to buy it based on that.

So my wife and I drove the Mokka and it really is a great car but being a "designer" type car we immediately realised practically it didn't make much sense as an upgrade. The rear seat space wasn't any more than the Picanto's in reality and while the boot was larger it wasn't solving our problem of taking all our stuff away for a weekend without having to load it up behind the front seats.

We also recently adopted a parrot and transporting it with a full car was problematic in and of itself. When we bought the Picanto my son was just born and we've already learnt with my daughter that the 4x4 pram was wasted on us as we just weren't those types of people to go running around with babies and if we took them anywhere they'd just be in there car seat and that was that. But now both being at primary school age they want more space but also one major issue with the Picanto is the lack of rear air vents.

Don't get me wrong the Kia Picanto is a great car, it's just no longer the car that fits us. I honestly believe you buy a car for what you plan to do with it 95% of the time and that's exactly why I sold the GTI and traded it down on a Picanto in the first place as it was dying a slow death eating tyres and fuel doing 15km of traffic a day and never really smashing the passes on the weekend or hitting Killarney like it originally was bought for.
 
Why the Haval?

Enter the Haval H6 that happened to be on their floor and my memory of having driven it before I knew the car pretty well and so I asked if I can let my wife have a go since I already knew the car to see what she things as she'll be the one primarily driving considering I ride the motorcycle 99% of the time.

Now maybe I'm harsh on them for having just booked in the car and not really prepping it yet...but surely at the very least you make sure the tyres are pumped as immediately it had three tyres popping up on the dashboard as flat. After fiddling with the interface it turns out they weren't that flat but you know as long as an error is there the interface doesn't work properly and it's just annoying. More so after driving it home and seeing it in the sun it had a whole bunch of scratches down the side where it seems someone drove along a thorn bush. It didn't seem to have gone through the clear coat but it's just something I expect to be taken care of before you list a car online.

The wireless charger mat was missing and there was a lot dirty scuffs on the inside...and Avis have this bizarre thing where none of their cars have mats in and turns out when you buy them they throw in some generic stuff that more or less fits. I was advised that they would be getting in another one but would also let me know once this car was cleaned up to come around again to take a look.

Regardless my wife was sold on the car,and due to mad depreciation in only about 18 months from new, for only R70k more than the original budget it offered so much more while also retaining the same or better fuel economy than the Kia Picanto due to being a hybrid so there was no increase in costs there. It made so much more sense for the space it offers as well as the crazy feature list and massive boot that I started looking for better examples.

I ended up reaching out to Avis in Wynberg who had two more for similar mileage of 36,000 and 44,000km but the lower one had apparently been sold already so only the one remained. The sales lady...who works from home was a bizarre experience needing to make sure first if the cars were there and then could only assist me by proxy. When I rocked up there to look at the car they were all very confused and were basically treating me like they were doing me a favour to try to sell me this vehicle and once again got into a car with one flat tyre which was quite dirty (granted they sleep outside so that's not unreasonable) and later after driving it I discovered the right front tyre was borderline illegal.

They sent me on a chaperoned drive with a random chap who I think washes the cars otherwise because he knew absolutely nothing about the car (not that I needed any educating) and was on his phone the whole time unless directing me where to drive. At least he took me on the highway which they rarely do and I then discovered when the car was doing the auto-braking when doing adaptive cruise control there was a huge shudder from the back almost like going over those keep awake rumble strips. I didn't think it was necessarily something wrong at that point, until I tested the same thing on other cars later and none of them did it.

Needless to say I was very unimpressed with Avis Wynberg and to date nobody has bothered to follow up with me and make a sale, even though they are the only company out of all of them that had me sign any paperwork to go for a test drive.

Cars.co.za have been phenomenal for this whole shopping experience and so I used their Watch list notification thing to let me know if any of the specific car pops up and then all at once I had two show up in Worcester and two in Paarl. Dawid Pieterse from Haval Paarl was phenomenal and called me within 5min of me enquiring via Cars.co.za. The Worcester guys weren't too bad either, considering I contacted them late at night and they got to me first thing the next morning...but to date the sales person has never introduced himself to me, yes it's a small thing but just a detail around the whole experience. He just started going for it on WhatsApp and then pushed the higher mileage car I didn't inquire about without telling me and I just happened to spot it. Sure he made the effort to source the other car for me, but still it's just a little bit sneaky.

Haval Paarl was amazing from start to finish every step of the way and I ended up buying my car from them for this very reason. The lower mileage car wasn't available on Saturday and so I drove the other one which to date was the first one without any issues that weren't easily addressable. It was also the first person who I actually believed when they said they would sort out a paint issue here and there or the compressor being missing and that they would put original brand new Haval mats in the car upon delivery.

The car in Worcester was fine and lower mileage but had a clear respray on the nose with a dripping paint droplet clear as day and when I asked about it the way it was re-directed as a non-issue just annoyed me. The comparatively open and honest experience I got from Dawid at Haval Paarl just made me want to deal with him over anyone else. While he did chaperone us on the test drive he was very well informed on the cars and also let us actually drive it and spent a solid hour with us I reckon.

I went back out there on Tuesday to check out the other lower mileage car and didn't even feel a need to test drive it taking his word that it's perfectly fine, which was probably a mistake on my part as the one issue I didn't think could possibly be an issue being the HUD...ended up being the issue but I'll get to that later. All of these cars have warranty up to October/November 2027 so any issue would be sorted by that either way, my biggest concern was purely cosmetic stuff and wear and tear.

So I got a pretty good trade-in offer from them immediately and the Worcester guys pushed that up a bit and they happily matched it but ultimately WeBuyCars offered me slightly more and I went with them. I did get an online quote from GetWorth which was much higher than all three but I couldn't book an appointment with them without the Natis docs which even though the car was settled year ago I only requested now and they ended up dragging their heels. Again nobody from Getworth ever contacted me beyond the automated electronic stuff and the guy from WeBuyCars, Stephan was very on the ball throughout and so I felt he deserved to get the deal for the effort the made.


Delivery/Collection from Haval Paarl
This morning I went to collect the car in Paarl. Originally I wanted the gunmetal silver as I generally find white quite boring, but after seeing it in the flesh and with the contrasting black rims and other blacked out bits it actually works very well, especially when it's outside and that pearlescent metallic sheen catches the light a bit.

He was mortified that the scratch and paint touchup guys or whatever you want to call them had dropped him and so they hadn't yet sorted that out and then the smash & grab guys not only discovered a scratch on the window but also made a very obvious bubble on the driver side door that is unlikely to sort itself out, so the original plan to come fit the plates for me when they arrive now became bringing the car back sometime soon for a day or two during which they'll give me a loan vehicle and address all these little things.

Ironically none of this pressure to get it done was on my part, I was happy to take delivery next weekend or somewhere in the week but he wanted to get it done so I can only assume it relates to making targets for June, but of course I had now already sold my other car so it was problematic for me to delay it now.

Otherwise it was all smooth sailing and I don't know if it was the joke I made about the crazy R4000 delivery fee and the cheap Haval branded wine I'll be buying for myself but I got two bottles of 2019 Rossouw Collection which actually doesn't seem **** at all. Usually I fight these on the road fees to the death, but all things considered the fact they guaranteed me a full tank and sorting out all these little things on my snag list as well as proper mats and everything I felt it's not bad value.

Before driving off I factory reset the entertainment unit and the driver's cluster just to make sure I get the factory fresh experience...and then bizarrely the car would not go into Drive mode. At first he thought it was that I hadn't closed the door properly, but that didn't fix it, then we wondered maybe the factory reset messed something up...it turns out I had never turned the car on, as in pushed the start button.

Being all electric you never know if it's "on" or if it's "ON" if you didn't just climb into it from being completed locked and properly off, so that was a bit of a laugh and I thought he was about to have a heart attack for this straight off the floor failure.

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The First Fail

So being an absolute nerd the first thing I did down the endless main road of Paarl back to the N1 was engage the intelligent cruise control to follow the car in front of me.

That worked without a hitch but then bizarrely to my surprise the HUD (Heads Up Display) which was one of my favourite features of this car as it just changes the entire way you drive by having all the information right in your view was off.

Turns out the factory reset turns it off by default for who knows what reason and my wife fiddled in the menus to turn it back on and immediately it wasn't quite right having a bit of a blurry double image. I adjust it up and down and also fiddles with my seat thinking it was angle thing maybe as one of the others I drove we though it was off but it was actually adjusted so low and I sat too high or some such that I couldn't see it at all.

Didn't worry too much about it as I figured I'd fiddle with it later. Figured maybe it was never used and there is a film over the projector because that's pretty much what it appears like something overlaying it causing a double image.

So when I got home I cleaned it and the windscreen but it made no difference. Holding my phone up to the projection it reflects it perfectly crystal clearly and so I came to the conclusion it's the windscreen and maybe they had just coated it with something and I need to just give it a proper sunlight wash tomorrow. But then Googling a bit it turns out that a HUD actually requires a special windscreen with a polarised laying in to prevent exactly this from happening.

Immediately I figured well the windscreen was replaced but then upon checking the name plate/number badge thing it said Haval and all looked fine until I got a mate of mine with a Jolian to check his and clearly it said HUD on the label. Therefore my suspicion is either this car had the wrong windscreen straight out of the factory OR at some point it was replaced and the wrong one was fitted. I WhatsApp'd my man Dawid who even late on a Saturday night responded and didn't know this was a thing either so he will tackle it in the week and go check the other one's windscreen as I bet him money it will have a logo that says HUD.

Hopefully it won't be a big issue to solve since it's clearly Haval branded, I was seeing how they will just wash their hands of it under warranty if it was some third party replacement so now it's more of an inconvenience I hope.

Still deeply annoyed with myself that the one thing I specifically chose not to check because I figured it would be impossible for it to go wrong...is exactly the thing that ends up being wrong.

More updates to follow how that all pans out.
 
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Auto Parking

Getting to Makro on the way home and finding a very open parking lot the inner nerd in me was like I just have to try this Auto Parking stuff. I had read the manual before buying the car but it still wasn't exactly intuitive to figure out and it's sort of a three step process of turning it on and then it scans for parkings and you select one and it then tells you to "unlock the steering" and then it starts to do it's thing.

So I don't know if you can do it forwards and if you can use it to alley dock park as well, because in both cases I used it all I got was reverse parking.

At Makro there are these trees planted inside the low sidewalk style blocks and so last minute I was convinced it was going to hit it and so I braked and took over. Other than that it did a perfect job of it but the entire process was very slow and ultimately I reckon I can do it much faster but probably not better.

Later on I went to the Checkers and oddly with their solar-panel covered parking spots it seemed to struggle a bit more to detect a parking and this time I chose one with another car in the next parking over and that just made it seem so much more dicey.

But it did it's thing and I let it go all the way and it parked more perfectly than I could possibly imagine with the exact same gap on both side.

The only problem I only discovered later is that it parked so close to the Polo behind it that the automated boot wouldn't open presumably because it detects the car there and knows it would knock into it and so it just refused.

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Find My Car

A feature I didn't know I might need having driven a bright red car for the past few years that is very easy to find, but the Haval being white blends in a lot more.

So on the key fob is a literally a find my car button which you hold and then it will flash the lights for a few seconds after which it will start hooting.

I tried it at a crazy range and it worked perfectly well, so a pretty handy feature to have.

All your **** rolls around everywhere

It's been a long while since I've had a boot this big and flat and while the little corner slots are great if you had only 2 x 2L Cokes to hold if you have an entire shopping trolley full of stuff this is a **** show to deal with and I suspect I might end up putting stuff behind the front seats most of the time.

I've had an idea of maybe getting a large tray at one of the plastics shops that can just live in the boot permanently and is maybe two bags wide just to hold groceries in place and stop them running around all over the place.

Just one of the things you don't think about where all that "practical" space isn't really very practical at all.

Electric Weirdess

It truly is bizarre to start your car...and then nothing happens. And then you set off and all you hear is tyre and suspension like you've never heard it before until you reach 60-ish km/h or throttle harder and the petrol engine kicks in perfectly seamlessly without a jolt or a moan and things just happen.

I can see myself freaking out plenty of pedestrians sneaking up on them with this massive white whale of a car.

And for this reason it seems at first like the indicators are obnoxiously loud, but then thinking about it while on the highway it wasn't annoying so it's purely a case of the absence of engine noise making it seem so hectic. I might get used to it otherwise I might go hunting for the relay and seeing if I can damper it somewhat.

Blindspot Awareness

I opted to put most of the beeping in the car off in favour of more visual queues and I was surprised how your eye catches these in the mirror.

As a motorcyclist this has been a revelation for me and my personal safety in traffic as I have not once encounter ed any car with this tech almost taking me out so it truly works and makes life for everyone much simpler.

One thing I do find useless is that the 360-camera on the dashboard comes on when the blindspot warning triggers...but unless I'm changing lanes to the left I'm obviously going to be looking right and away from it. In this regard Kia's system that pops up in front of you and uses the actual mirror camera to display the blind spot is far superior as you don't even need to look over your shoulder as the car does it for you.

Intelligent Cruise Control

This truly changes the game to simply have it monitor lanes for you and follow the car in front of you and makes for a very relaxing experience overall.

I'm usually the kind of person who cruises at 140km/h just wanting to get there, but quite happily today set it to 120km/h and dropped into the left lane and had a perfectly relaxing experience of it.

I've been told that when it corners by itself without another car in front of you it's pure garbage and brakes way too much and slows right down but I guess I'll have to experience that for myself before I go turning that off. I don't really see myself using it too much in that capacity anyway but I guess I'll only know after a proper longer distance trip.

I am very keen to take it to work one day...which will probably be the first time in 10 years that I actually do that with a car, purely to see how all of this works in bottlenecked traffic and if it brings the same relaxation across as the weekend highway drive.

The car also offers one-pedal driving mode which I'm keen to try out but will give it a week or two before I got there and this will be a thing my wife will need to be happy with because...

Driver/Key Profiles

Something that seems to be lacking from days of old when I drove an Audi with electric seats was how you programmed your settings to your key or the 1/2/3 buttons not the door for different people driving the car.

That feels desperately necessary in a car like this with so much technology as obviously different people are going want to configure everything quite differently both from the interface perspective down to what settings are turned on or off.

Sadly that's missing from this car, or I've just not discovered it yet, but would be a really useful feature.

Heads Up Display

By far my favourite and coolest feature of this car because it just changes your entire approach to driving so much.

You can configure exactly what you want to see but with everything on you will have your radar display showing the lanes and cars around you, your navigation from Apple CarPlay/Android Auto in a more simplified manner just showing the next turn and in what distance and what it's called as well as your current cruise control settings and the most recent speed sign it's read. Oh and your current speed of course.

If someone calls you their name will popup otherwise the number that is calling.

Which means you basically never ever have to look anywhere but at the road in front of you and it's incredible how much more chill this makes the entire driving experience. You can adjust it for height, so between your seat settings and just personal preference you can get it exactly where you want, but there are limits of course where it will just disappear from view due to your viewing angle.

Like I said before, to my surprise this actually requires a special windscreen to make work properly and crystal clearly, but I can see even if you had to retrofit this to an old car it would be quite useful even if not perfectly clear in appearance.

Everything LED

I love the idea of not having to worry about bulbs any more and I'm genuinely looking forward to what it will be like to drive at night now.

While the Kia had DRL's the normal lights were still old school bulbs and while it's not terrible I just know the LED experience will be far superior.

I do however wonder what night time driving will be like with so much screen inside the car, but that remains to be seen on how it compensates for that, if at all.

There is some ambient lighting inside that projects onto the dashboard and door panels, but my garage wasn't really dark enough to quite experience that just yet and I haven't fiddled around to see if you can change it in any way.
 
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Touch Everything

Now this has never been a concern for me. I was there when phones became all touchscreen and the world freaked out about how terrible it is...and yet here we are today where everyone accepts this now.

I feel similarly about cars and I see way too often people moaning about everything being on the touchscreen, but reviewers seemingly forget that any new cars is unfamiliar to you and until you've spent a few days with it you are always going to fiddle a bit to find things.

Whenever I hear them moan about needing to adjust the air con I especially want to lose my **** because these are all cars with Climate Control and there should be no need for you to constantly be fiddling with it...so why are you moaning about the touch screen when actually the climate control is kak?

That being said every single moan I've seen about this car has come out of a place of ignorance where nobody bothered to learn the shortcuts of how to operate it properly and were just moaning for the sake of moaning due to their own ignorance.

If there is maybe one valid moan it's the fact there is no analog volume knob for the passenger, but again there is a very easy shortcut to get there if you bothered to learn.

The car itself has two themes one which is sort of an ice blue space vibe and the other being a more race orange. This changes the layout of the "clocks" and main interfaces quite a lot but I don't know yet if you can mix and match them or not.

The main display in front of you can be augmented quite a bit and on the left and right side you can choose to display trip data, music, navigation or any warnings/notifications. It's easy enough to flip between them while driving but the only one really but multiple sets of information is the "car" one where you can go up and down between the fuel economy stats, trip data and stuff like tyre pressure monitoring.

Blow on my ass, baby.

The ventilated seats are magical, I actually can't wait for summer as this will be a perfect way for me to be quite happy and my wife not to be freezing because I want to turn all the vents wide open.

Heated seats have always been a bit weird for me as just an odd sensation, but I would think especially for people who have cars sleeping outside this is a huge thing.

The heated steering wheel on the other hand is definitely something I will see myself using often.

The car has an "auto demist" function...I'm not sure how it figured that out but I guess I'll wait and see if it actually works.

Apple not so Wireless Carplay

As with most every car out there now the car has Apple CarPlay and like most every other car does not support it wirelessly even though it has a wireless charger right there under the head unit area.

Fun fact, if you use the wireless charger it will give you a notification reminder to take your phone when you turn the car off.

So as per the other thread in this section I was looking to augment that with an adaptor that sort of piggybacks the interface to make it work wirelessly but then realised my wife can't use that anyway and I'll end up swopping cables and things anyway. However thinking about it on the weekend we realised that with her driving to work and other short trips the battery knock probably won't even be significant enough to matter so we'll see how that pans out.

Oddly enough I find the interface for CarPlay a little bit slower to respond than on my Kia. It is much bigger so maybe that's a reason why and I am still on a now ancient iPhone 11 so it might not even be the car. It's not a problem really just something I noticed.

Another thing that will take some getting used to is that the Siri button on the Kia I touched once and then talked wheres here I need to hold it in a for a little and that delay throws me off a bit. I haven't tried to see if I can just talk to it and say "Hey Siri" come to think of it.

Unlike my Kia the CarPlay interface is actually the right way round now so that feels weird, but if it wasn't the sheer size of the screen would have been very problematic. I do feel it could have been angled towards the driver ever so slightly instead of smack bang in the middle and perfectly flat for all to use instead.
 
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Ultimately I want to make this thread a bit of a journal of my ownership experience with the car and I plan to report on little things that I like or discover as well as things that maybe annoy me along the way.

I also plan to report on the dealership experience and any problems I might have and how they are handled since I know there are a lot of people wondering what the entire Chinese car experience is like and not wanting to take the plunge themselves.

My first service is due in about 5,000km and I reckon depending on time passed I should have another 2 after that while still under plan and then I'll be paying out of pocket.

My ideal is to keep this car for the next 8-10 years, by which time I expect to trade up to a fully electric car without taking any feature loss and probably having even more tech.
 
Congrats on your purchase. This would be my choice of car if I was looking to replace my old H6. The chaperone thing is odd, maybe you just look dodgy!? I was given the keys and told to test drive as long as I wanted. Only I had to go back in to ask where the handbrake was
 
schuits said:
Congrats on your purchase. This would be my choice of car if I was looking to replace my old H6. The chaperone thing is odd, maybe you just look dodgy!? I was given the keys and told to test drive as long as I wanted. Only I had to go back in to ask where the handbrake was
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It’s not everywhere, but happens often enough. Never ever once had any issue riding bikes that cost as much as this car and have ridden probably over a hundred different ones of those by now.

Was just a comment on how being given the keys and time to drive it properly makes a huge difference in the decision making process.
 
One Pedal Driving

I had to run to the shops again this morning to buy food colouring for baking a cake and decided to turn on the one pedal driving to see how that works.

First surprise was that this doesn’t work at all I’m reverse, which I guess makes some sort of weird sense as it’s the regenerative engine braking from the electric mirror operates this, not the brakes themselves.

I struggled to find the options in the menus to adjust the regen to its maximum, only to later read when enabling one pedal that’s disabled…which it probably said in the T&C’S I needed to accept to enable it.

It’s weird.

Now you need to plan your distance to a stop and release quite prematurely as compared to when I would start braking and getting to a perfect stop at a stop street would be a real challenge so you’d still need the brake.

When I came up to a robot it stopped dead but I was miles away from the car in front of me.

Maybe this could work in combination with the auto brake and just letting that take care of stopping but still that only works with cars in front of you.

So I’ll probably turn it back off, but the middle ground may be setting the regen braking to its highest which will achieve much the same effect without needing to alter my driving style.

No Crawl

You know how automatics normally crawl forward when you release the brake? Well this doesn’t do that because you don’t brake in the first place due to the electric motor.

Everything is based on the throttle rather than the brake and I’ve found myself multiple times just sitting there wondering why nothing is happening and then going oh yeah I need to use the throttle.

I suspect if you turn regen off it will crawl, but would defeat most of the purpose of the car so won’t be doing that.
 
Gtx Gaming said:
Came here to read about feul consumption, left dissapointed :p
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He he, I’ll update that in time with real figures and not the claimed kak.

So at least 2000km and two tanks from now I reckon.

Funnily enough for the life of the Kia Picanto it averaged 6.3 l/100km because while it would go as low as 5 l/100 in urban settings it worked hard on the highway.
 
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My car is sitting on 40000 km and I am getting 6.5 average.

Best car I have ever owned and I will buy another one once this one is is out of warranty.
 
The HUD/Windscreen issue is now confirmed.

They have compared my windscreen from a photo sent them to the other car on their floor and noted it says HUD and mine does not so it’s clearly the issue.

Now they reckon they’ve never seen this before and I don’t know if they mean they’ve never seen the wrong windscreen fitted or never knew they were different.

Either way sales guy has learnt something new, hopefully the rest of it is purely academic.

Of course a bird or the tree I parked under properly has a period all over the the drivers door and mirror so the new car is now properly christened.
 
Comfort

Granted I’m not used to this style of car but I spent a good hour sitting in it quite stationary yesterday while my wife went to renew her license and I can’t remember when I’ve ever had so much leg room that my knees can comfortably touch without hitting the underneath of steering column.

Didn’t feel a moment of fatigue or annoyance with the seats and it’s a very well thought out design between the door rest area and the centre console.

One thing I can say is a bit of an adjustment, is that I feel I turn a hell of a lot of wheel going around 90-degree corners. It’s probably a combination of steering ratio and the bigger car I’m not used to, but I’ll still fiddle with the three steering options to see if they make this any easier.
 
Hitting the Highway

In the interests of science I decided to drive from the Northern Suburbs of Cape Town to the CBD this morning while there are still school holidays ongoing and it's not too painful.

It was a whole lot more relaxing than riding the bike for sure, with my ass being warmed and the climate control blowing on me softly. It's a nice quiet place to be and very comfortable all round and I didn't feel the usual seat fatigue at all on my 40-minute drive.

Traffic Jam Assist as they call the intelligent cruise control is a bit kak in the 60-zones as it goes on/off the whole time based on conditions and obviously doesn't stop at traffic lights by itself so you need to keep your eyes on the road the whole time and I'll probably not use this too much. However hitting the highway proper, I turned it on once and it stayed on all the way into town and didn't do anything weird or abrupt. The only thing I would have loved to be able to do is set it to "hug" the right side of the lane because I'm a motorcyclist myself and cars sitting right smack bang in the middle of a lane is just unnecessary. Here and there it will brake a little bit harder than I personally would have but overall the way it compensates for speed is done very well. Self-driving will truly be a game changer, the fact you need to still hold the wheel just to show your presence does feel a bit like it defeats the purpose of the entire thing, but overall it makes the drive more relaxing.

My overall average fuel consumption dropped down to 7.6l/100km and even that is astounding in itself for such a massive car but I still expect it to go down further over time.

Speaking of massive I washed it with my fancy new Karcher high pressure thing yesterday afternoon and it's the first time ever I've needed a step ladder to wash the roof of a car.

Ergonomic Design Fail

The Kia Picanto's CarPlay was wrong in the sense that the interface was flipped with the buttons on the left side as if made for a left hand drive car. So this is fixed on the Haval with the buttons on the right hand side, but this has highlighted the ergonomic failure of the Haval design itself being ALL THE WAY OVER ON THE LEFT when there is a massive screen to navigate.

It would have been so much better if it was just flipped around with the primary buttons towards the right.

Also a little annoying is jumping to the CarPlay interface it doesn't go straight to the "Dashboard" summary view but instead the Home Screen which isn't where you want to be 99% of the time, which is something my Kia didn't do so now it's an annoying two step process.

Another thing that is a little annoying is that when the proximity cameras come on it lowers the volume of the sound system which makes some sense but is also annoying at the same time and so it would have been nice to get an option to adjust that.

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