AION wants £28,950 for a supermini

Two new Chinese brands in a fortnight, then. AION is the electric arm of GAC, one of China's oldest carmakers, arriving here as a joint venture with Jameel Motors and run out of Slough. The UT is its second UK car after the V SUV, and it is a supermini with a price that will make you look twice.

£28,950. That is what AION wants for a B-segment hatchback, and it is a genuinely bold number. A Citroën ë-C3 starts at £18,495 and a Hyundai INSTER at £23,755. The UT is not competing on price, and AION is not pretending otherwise.

What it is competing on is range. The 60 kWh battery is quoted at 268 miles, which is a long way clear of anything else this size: the best Renault 5 manages 252 miles, and most of the class sits nearer 200. If your objection to a small electric car has always been that it will not get you to Cornwall, the UT is the first one in this class with a straight answer.

The rest of the numbers are promising rather than proven. 7.3 seconds to 62 mph is quick for a supermini, and the 440 litre boot is larger than anything else here by some margin, though AION describes it as a multi-layer boot, which usually means the headline figure is measured with the floor at its lowest. There is one trim level, a £1,200 Premium Pack for the panoramic roof and powered tailgate, and a 14.6-inch screen and 360-degree camera as standard.

Then there is the warranty, which is really the pitch. The Great 8 Promise gives you eight years of warranty, eight years of servicing, eight years of roadside assistance and MOTs until the car is eight years old. Crucially it is locked to the vehicle rather than the owner, so it carries over when you sell. Costed honestly, eight years of servicing is worth a decent chunk of the gap between the UT and its rivals, and it makes the price look considerably less silly than it does at first glance.

What we do not have yet is everything else. AION has published a price, a battery and a range, and nothing at all about how big the car is, how much power it has, or how fast it charges. For a supermini bought to potter about town that last one matters less than it does for a family SUV, but 268 miles is a motorway sort of number, and a motorway sort of number needs a charging figure to go with it.

Order books open in September, and the UT makes its public debut at the British Motor Show in Farnborough. We will fill in the blanks here as soon as AION publishes them.