Chery Tiggo 7 Review

Chery tested the UK waters with Omoda and Jaecoo and, after a year, the two sub-brands racked up a near-three-percent market share between them. That’s more than established brands like Dacia, Honda and Volvo.

Now, Chery has launched in the UK with its own-badged cars. There’s the Tiggo 7, a five-seater, or the Tiggo 8 seven-seater. Both come with pure petrol and plug-in hybrid options – there’s no EV in sight.

As a new car, the Tiggo 7 certainly packs a price punch. The petrol in base Aspire trim is sub £25k (jumping to the Summit trim costs £3,000 extra, while the upgrade to plug-in hybrid is an additional £5,000). Considering it’s a similar size to the Kia Sportage, Volkswagen Tiguan and Hyundai Tucson, the Chery Tiggo 7 undercuts those cars by a vast margin.

Currently, the Tiggo 7 SHS is the cheapest plug-in hybrid in the UK, too.

But climb in and you won’t feel like you’ve picked a cheaper option. There’s a pair of large screens, lots of soft-touch materials and plenty of equipment. Headroom is particularly strong, and legroom is good for a car of this size too.

Chery already has a dealer network in place, with big expansion plans for 2026. There’s a seven-year/100,000-mile warranty, and a partnership with DHL to provide an overnight parts delivery service – so there shouldn’t be any worry about your car being off the road for weeks on end if something goes wrong.

So… what’s the catch? Well, the Tiggo 7’s 426-litre boot is small for this class, and some of the money you’re saving on the purchase price will be spent at the petrol station. Chery uses its own engines, but the standard one is pretty thirsty.

Inside, the Tiggo 7 is smart and modern, although the default twin screen layout doesn’t make it stand out particularly.

Those two 12.3-inch screens come as standard in the tech-heavy Tiggo – the right-hand one is a digital instrument display and the left-hand one is a whizzy touchscreen that’s quick to respond (thanks to a Snapdragon processor).

The main information is clearly presented, although there’s a lot of supplementary info with small icons on the digital dials – and there’s very little configurability in them. You can’t get rid of the radar display that seems to show cars in front weaving all over the road.

On balance, the touchscreen is more good than bad. We like how easy it is to turn off some of the driver assist functions (swipe down from the top of the screen), and that the home screen and climate menus are easy enough to work your way around. The icons are a little bit small, though, and we quite often had to choose one screen or another – not particularly handy when you’ve got Apple CarPlay on for the navigation on an unfamiliar road.

As we’ve seen in MG and Kia cars, to name a couple, there’s a configurable star button on the steering wheel. But you’ve only got a limited choice of what it can control, and one of those is the mirror controls – despite there also being physical mirror controls just to the right of the wheel.

Petrol Tiggo 7s don’t come with sat nav – you’ve got to use CarPlay or Android Auto. Luckily both are wireless and work over Bluetooth. There’s built-in sat nav with EV charge point locations on the plug-in hybrid Tiggo 7.

However, standard equipment is very strong. The Aspire trim includes LED lights, power adjustment on the driver’s seat, adaptive cruise control, a reversing camera and double glazing. Ascend to Summit trim and you’ll also get heated and cooled front seats, a high-power wireless phone charging pad, an electric boot lid and an eight-speaker Sony sound system – played through the gorgeous laser-cut speaker grilles.

That’s just one highlight of a plushly trimmed interior. There’s a lot of soft-touch material that does a good impression of leather, some nice textured aluminium trim on the centre console and the switches feel solid and tactile. We’re less keen on the gloss black plastic used on the steering wheel buttons, though, because it gets fingerprint smears on it as soon as you use it.

Whereas Omoda is pitched as the young and fashionable brand, and Jaecoo as the posher arm, parent company Chery is all about family. And the Tiggo 7 mostly delivers on the practicality front.

There’s a huge amount of rear headroom – even with the panoramic sunroof that’s fitted on top-spec cars. Rear legroom is pretty decent as well, and is probably as spacious as most other midsize SUVs.

Even in the petrol car, there isn’t a transmission tunnel. That means a flat floor in the back and a handy hidden storage area under the centre console up front. Three adults would just about be comfortable in the Tiggo 7’s back seats. Meanwhile, easy-to-find Isofix points help when installing child seats.

Behind, the boot is on the small side. Compared to the Kia Sportage, MG HS and Hyundai Tucson, the Tiggo 7’s 426 litres is a little disappointing. It should still be enough for a weekly shop or kids’ sports gear, but you’ll struggle for space on family holidays and when transporting larger items. There are a couple of useful hooks and a 12V socket.

We were surprised to find a spare wheel under the boot floor in the petrol car. Most manufacturers would give you extra space under the floor and nothing more than a can of tyre foam. In the plug-in hybrid, the space is almost entirely taken up by the battery pack, with just a small cubby that’s only just big enough to fit a neatly folded up charging cable into.

Chery started out as an engine maker, so you’d think that’s where its main expertise lies. But the petrol engine is thirsty. Official figures suggest you’ll get up to 32.7mpg, and we only just beat that on smooth, flowing A-roads where the engine isn’t overly stressed. You’ll get around 40mpg from the Tucson and Sportage. A near-full tank only gave us a range estimate of around 300 miles.

The 147hp produced by the engine is more than enough to whisk the Tiggo 7 along and get it up to speed. The response from the accelerator pedal is pretty impressive, although its eagerness to serve up power does mean that it’s quite difficult to creep forward smoothly. While the engine is a little vocal under heavy acceleration, it’s not intrusive.

Or, you can choose Chery’s Super Hybrid System. This plug-in hybrid system combines a 1.5-litre petrol with an 18.4kWh battery, for an EV range of 56 miles (and a claimed total range of 750 miles). As in the Jaecoo 7 SHS, the powertrain tries to use electric power as often as possible, and it does often feel like an EV to drive. You get the instant oomph from the electric motor, and it even misses out on the petrol car’s engine start button – climb in and the car turns on, just like in a Tesla Model Y or Skoda Enyaq.

Driving the Chery Tiggo 7 is easy – every car has an automatic gearbox so you just have to press one pedal to go and another to stop.

The Tiggo 7 is generally very comfortable. It masks low-speed jolts like potholes and speed bumps, and is very settled at higher speeds. In fact, it almost feels Volkswagen-like at speed, with an immensely stable feel that inspires confidence. The petrol Tiggo 7 doesn’t exactly inspire fast driving but, if you want to get a lick on down a winding B-road, it delivers a planted and flowing driving experience with no nasty surprises.

The steering in the plug-in hybrid is noticeably quicker than in the petrol, so the car responds immediately to even small steering inputs. That can sometimes make the SHS feel a bit tippy. Plus, the extra power can occasionally unsettle the front wheels, briefly causing the car to tramline or understeer.

With the extra weight of the battery pack on board, the SHS has to be a little firmer. And, therefore, it’s not quite so comfortable.

Every Tiggo 7 comes with a treasure trove of driver assistance tech, including lane-keep assist, speed limit recognition, traffic jam assist and a driver attention monitor. It’s a little surprising that the Tiggo 7 misses out on a five-star Euro NCAP score, although it’s still quite safe with an 80% score for adult protection and pedestrian protection.