Enter Vanman: We took the Farizon SV on the 2025 Explorer EV Rally

The Farizon SV is a purpose-built electric van with plenty of clever tech including drive-by-wire, dedicated aero, and a clever skateboard chassis. To find out if it can handle a day of full-on van-manning, we drove it around the North West on the final leg of the 2025 Explorer EV Rally.

After 30 years or so of wishful thinking, I can now call myself a rally driver… albeit with a caveat. While my rally career didn’t take me to the sweeping gravel stages of Finland, the fact I completed the 2025 Explorer EV Rally means I’ve fulfilled a childhood dream and am one degree away from being Kalle Rovanperä. In my mind.

After all, by no means did I make my first appearance as a rally driver behind the wheel of a fire-spitting, exhaust-popping Toyota GR Yaris Rally1. Instead, my rally debut was driving the oh-so-quiet, all-electric Farizon SV. If you hadn’t heard of the brand, don’t worry – neither had we until late last year.

For reference, then, the Farizon SV is a van built by Farizon, a subsidiary of Geely – the absurdly massive Chinese automotive conglomerate who owns everything from Volvo to Lotus.

The SV is quite a handsome thing, too. Don’t get me wrong, the Farizon SV isn’t headturning in the way that Geely products such as the Volvo ES90 and Polestar 5 are, but for a five-metre long load-lugger, it’s nice. Not dissimilar to Renault’s upcoming range of next-gen electric vans, in fact.

The two-tone stepped front end – or “Urban Efficient Aesthetics” – gives it a premium look over competitors from Stellantis and Ford, and Farizon says this efficiency-driven approach gives it a drag coefficient of just 0.29Cd. To put that into perspective, the ultra-slippery Cd of the Mercedes EQS – the world’s most aerodynamically-efficient car – is 0.20Cd.

Aero efficiency isn’t the only area where Farizon has put plenty of thought into the SV. Instead of ripping the derv-burner out of an existing van and swapping it for an electric drivetrain, the firm has built the SV as a ground-up EV and the UK’s first and only software defined panel van. It also includes some very clever drive-by-wire underpinnings for throttle, brake and steering, which reduce the number and weight of components in the search for better energy efficiency and longer range.

The van I’m driving – that’s the ‘Jade Green’ one, by the way – comes with a 228bhp front-mounted motor, which is paired with an 83kWh battery returning a range of up to 234 miles. That’s £48,000, please and thank you.

2025 Explorer EV Rally: Shifting perceptions

With the technical details of the Farizon SV out of the way, now’s probably a good time to explain more about the 2025 Explorer EV Rally. The event has been doing the rounds since 2021, and is focused on changing perceptions around EVs.

Rather than blatting down a narrow gravel road in pursuit of the fastest special stage time, the Explorer EV Rally is more of an exercise in mythbusting: it was created to show how an EV can be used to do large distances, and how public charging is far more reliable than the EV-sceptics would claim.

This year’s Explorer EV Rally began in Newquay in Cornwall and wrapped up at Tatton Park in Cheshire. Over the course of the five-day event, journalists, fleet managers, and prospective customers covered a total of 1,043 miles along the country’s motorways, B-roads, and back lanes across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.

Commitments elsewhere meant I couldn’t drive the whole route. I was, however, tasked with driving the Farizon SV for the fifth and final leg of the rally.

The day would take me from where I live in the Peak District to the day’s first checkpoint in Manchester (27.5 miles away), on to a second at the Chamber House Solar Farm in Rochdale (a further 14.3 miles away), and then on to the rally finish at the rather lovely Tatton park (19.2 miles down the road). In total, this amounted to what would be 61 miles of stress-free motoring with the all-electric Farizon SV.

While the checkpoints were largely a bit of fun, they did add a sense of being on a proper point-to-point rally. In place of a timecard, competitors checked in by uploading a photo of themselves at the checkpoint on social media, then earmarking it with a set of pre-defined hashtags.

As someone who has harboured a life-long love for rallying, this adds some serious excitement, and you soon find yourself tuning your inner co-driver to ensure everything’s uploaded correctly before continuing your way to the next checkpoint.

What’s it like to drive the Farizon SV over a fair distance?

When speaking to Farizon’s incredibly thorough, incredibly helpful PR representative, Jamie, he was keen to stress that the SV is the world’s first all-electric panel van to come with an independent dual-wishbone front suspension and rear leaf springs. Paired with Geely’s GXA-M electric ‘skateboard’ architecture, it gives the SV a lower centre of gravity to return a more car-like drive.

Now, I’m not saying that the Farizon SV handles like a BMW i4. It doesn’t. Yet the clever suspension, low-riding platform and FWD set-up does make it feel different to a regular RWD panel van.

On the twisty, undulating Cat & Fiddle road taking you to Macclesfield and on into Manchester, the Farizon darts about with surprising agility. The ride doesn’t jiggle those bits of excess you didn’t know you had or had conveniently wiped from your memory. Dare I say… you can even get a bit of a hustle on?

On the M60 motorway into the city, the Farizon SV’s “car-like” characteristics once again shone through. It rides nicely at motorway cruising speeds, and would lose around a percentage of battery every two miles. When I set off from the Peak District, the van had 64% of its full 234-mile range remaining. By the time things finished at Tatton Park, around 20% was left.

As the Farizon is from China – a nation that seems to specialise in the excellent battery tech and ghoulish infotainment systems – I expected the SV’s 12.3-inch floating touch screen to be the only, nightmarish way of operating the dual-zone climate control.

Fortunately it isn’t, and changing the airflow inside the cabin is done via good ol’ fashioned switchgear. The vents are also trimmed in a very pleasant copper, not dissimilar to that used by Cupra, and there are smatterings of the stuff around the cabin.

The touchscreen is fine to use, but there are some “curious” translations from Chinese to English. My favourite was HVAC’s air speed, which was described as “blowing”. Ooh matron.

The graphics on the driver display screen are a bit… early-2010s Android, but this is a van. It’s built with the sole purpose of lugging stuff about. If I were spending £48k on a top-tier car whose on-board graphics resembled a 2010 HTC phone, then I’d have a problem. But the Farizon SV is not. So I don’t care.

Farizon says it designed the SV to be as comfortable and as car-like as possible. After all, its target market spends more time on the road than your average UK driver. This is evident with standard luxuries such as dual-zone blowing, heated and cooled seats for both passenger and driver, plus Apple CarPlay.

It’s not entirely plain sailing around North West England, though. Granted, I could be playing the part of the massively over-indulged car writer, but the Farizon SV’s pedal box felt tiny. Now, I’m not exactly Goofy in the shoe department, but Hell’s Teeth, it’s cramped and I found my ankle aching by the end of the day’s driving.

Final thoughts

Completing the 2025 Explorer EV Rally at Tatton Park was an oddly special feeling. Sure, the checkpoints were a bit of fun and there was no real jeopardy involved thanks to the van’s solid long-distance ability, but I enjoyed how they encouraged you to hurry up. In terms of real world use and application, were there chargers on site, you could easily use the checkpoints to top up your vehicle’s battery for a couple of minutes.

Rolling into Tatton Park was special, too. It’s a spectacular locale, and a genuinely pretty part of the UK. In the grounds of the Tatton Hall stately home, goats and deer roam freely in verdant pastures, while those seeking to escape the hustle and bustle of nearby Manchester on a late Friday afternoon appear just as bereft of worries. The fact that the late summer afternoon light draped everything in a golden light may have something to do with my romantic tableau, but I’m still taking it.

Pedal box aside, I very enjoyed my time with the SV. I have no need for a van in my life, but I’ve always liked them – I find them joyous for reasons I can’t quite explain. Perhaps my dedicated ‘Van Choons’ playlist* played a part here, but whatever. It added to a day that was built about celebrating the great and the good of EVs.

I also appreciate the level of thought the Farizon has put into making a dedicated ground-up vehicle as opposed to simply swapping an internal combustion engine for electric and being done with it.

Will the SV catch on as Farizon hopes it will? That I don’t know. But I can say this for certain – the 2025 Explorer EV Rally set out what it aimed to do: dispel any concerns about EV range anxiety. It’s really not a thing anymore. Even when you’re driving a 2.2-tonne van.

I’m already looking forward to next year’s event.

*’Van Choons’ available upon special request by sending me an Instagram message at george.drives.cars