Is this the cheap and cheerful Chinese electric car we need in Australia? New Nio Firefly electric hatchback could be the ideal cut-price alternative to the BYD Dolphin, MG4 and GWM Ora

This might be the most compelling small electric car to come out of China.

The Nio Firefly is a small hatchback that measures about four metres long, 1780mm wide and 1560mm high. This makes it slightly smaller than the BYD Dolphin and MG4 and a similar size to a Mazda2.

In China it costs the equivalent of about $32,000, which would put it at the pointy end of affordable electric cars in Australia. It would be slightly more than the cheapest Dolphin but less than the most affordable MG4.

It has cute retro styling that is reminiscent of the short lived Honda e.

The Firefly uses a 42kWh lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) battery according to recent filling to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in China.

It is claimed to drive up to 420km according to the more lenient China Light-duty vehicle Test Cycle (CLTC). Expect about 350km if tested to the benchmark WLTP regiment.

The Firefly is also compatible with Nio’s battery swap technology.

Owners simply drive to a battery swap station where their depleted battery is removed and replaced with a fully juiced cell. This process is claimed to take only three and a half minutes in the brand’s latest-generation battery swap stations.

The average electric car battery takes about 30 minutes to be refilled to 80 per cent when hooked up to a DC fast charger.

So far this process is mostly relegated to China but the company has started to roll out the battery swap stations in Europe. The majority of these are in Norway, which has extremely high penetration of electric cars, and Germany.

The technology is booming in China. Earlier this year the company claimed it swapped more than 136,000 batteries in one day, which is a record for the brand. This was preceded by Nio averaging more than 100,000 swaps a day for 10 straight days.

Nio is just one of the many Chinese electric car brands that has firmly established itself in its home country and is looking to expand outwards. There is no word yet on whether Australia is on the cards, but the battery swap technology would be ideal for a country as expansive as Australia.