Jaecoo 7 review: You will be fed up with this Chinese SUV after only 10 miles

Telegraph

8 hours ago

Put a petrol engine, an electric motor and a socking great battery into a car and, hey presto, you have a plug-in hybrid, or PHEV.
Once touted as the answer to all our problems, the reality has turned out to be somewhat different. Plug-in hybrids may sound like the best of both worlds but their relatively short electric ranges, and the need to then lug around a dead battery until you can charge it again, mean they're anything but.
Jaecoo thinks it might have the answer. It's called SHS, or Super Hybrid System, and it's arrived in the UK courtesy of its first model to make it to these shores: the new 7 SUV. So can Chinese ingenuity put the plug-in hybrid's demons to rest – or is Jaecoo's hybrid system super in name only?
Pros
Smart interior
Smooth powertrain
Low price
Cons
Far too reliant on a fiddly touchscreen
Horrible steering and accelerator pedal calibration
Incessantly intrusive driver aids
Who and what
Unless you're a particular follower of the Chinese automotive industry, you've probably never heard of Jaecoo before.
It is one of a mind-boggling array of automotive brands sold by Chery, one of China's state-owned automotive enterprises. Chery has been making cars since 1999 when it started churning out the Fengyun, a lightly facelifted first-generation Seat Toledo built under licence in Wuhu.
Today, Chery makes more than two million cars a year; until now though, none have made it to the UK. But this year Jaecoo, along with Omoda, is spearheading the company's entry into the British market.
The 7 is its first offering – a family SUV that's roughly the size of a Kia Sportage or Citroën C5 Aircross. It can come with either a 1.6-litre petrol turbo engine, or the SHS plug-in hybrid based around a 1.5-litre engine, with an 18.3kWh battery for an official electric-only range of 56 miles.
In combination, the two power units give a maximum output of 201bhp, enough for a top speed of 112mph and a 0-62mph time of 8.5 seconds.
So what about the Super Hybrid System makes it so super? Well, it's the fact that the battery never fully depletes, with the engine being used to charge it much like a normal full hybrid. You can even tell the car to force this recharging mode, which gains you electric range while you're driving, that you can use later on.
This seems clever, but I'm not sure what you're actually gaining – after all, using the engine as a petrol generator seems like an expensive way to add energy to the battery. Better, surely, to charge it at home – or simply use it as a hybrid.
Either way, if Jaecoo's claim of 745 miles from a full tank and a full battery is accurate and if you can fill up at £1.34 a litre, and charge at the current UK average of 27p/kWh, then you can cover that distance at a cost of £65-£70, which is distinctly reasonable compared with the £100-odd it would cost in a 45mpg pure petrol SUV.
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Sounds good so far, then. And the good news continues inside. The doors open and shut with a satisfying heft; the faux metal is convincing; the synthetic leather seats feel reasonably upmarket.
There's a minimalist dashboard with a full-width vent and a large, portrait-oriented touchscreen, below which sit a pair of phone holders, one with wireless charging and a cooling vent. There are two good-sized cupholders and a small, lidded cubby, with another larger bin beneath the floating centre console.
Another screen sits in front of the driver, displaying speed and other essential information, as well as the pod-like driver monitoring camera – more of which anon.
For the most part, the materials feel dense and high-quality, with slick switchgear and a sense that the 7 is perhaps not the bargain bin special you might have been expecting.
The downside, as with most of the Chinese SUVs that are flooding the market, is that there are barely any buttons to speak of. This means you must control most of the car's functions, of which there are many, through the touchscreen; an often languorous process.
For example, the climate control doesn't benefit from an 'always on' section of the display such as you'll find in Volvo XC40 or a Volkswagen Tiguan. So if you're using Apple Carplay or Android Auto, you have to swipe up to bring up the climate control display, before you can increase the temperature, meaning you need to look away from the road for far too long.
There's plenty of room in the rear seats, mind you, while loading kids into the back is easy enough. The boot's a decent size at 500 litres, meanwhile – bigger than a Tiguan eHybrid's, though a Sportage boasts more space still at 542. The 7 also lacks any rear-seat versatility, which means it can't keep up with the sort of flexibility offered by the C5 Aircross or Skoda Karoq.
Pounds and pence
How does it compare on price, though? Well, the plug-in hybrid model is only available in top-spec 'Luxury' form, which provides a plethora of equipment. This comes in at just over £35,000; to get a C5 Aircross in a broadly equivalent specification will cost about £3,000 more, while a Sportage PHEV, even its entry-level specification, will set you back upwards of £40,000.
Of course, most people choosing a PHEV won't be buying their car as they will be choosing it as a company car and in this regard the 7 stacks up, too. Its relatively long range lands it in the nine per cent BIK band which, together with the low P11D value, makes for extremely affordable company car tax bills.
Not bad for a car that comes with a seven-year, 100,000-mile warranty, you might think. But don't be fooled: a look at the small print shows there are quite a few seemingly random items that aren't covered beyond a relatively paltry three years and 40,000 miles. These include the fuel pump and injectors, oil pump, starter motor, alternator, window regulators and the entire infotainment system.
On the road
Once underway, you'll find a few things that are even harder to forgive. For example, there's an odd, switch-like quality to the accelerator pedal that makes it rather difficult to modulate your speed. It's surprisingly tricky to simply set the throttle to gain consistent acceleration – you're always adding too much, or not enough.
Then there's the steering, which feels completely disconnected from… well, anything. It's also completely inconsistent in its response, sometimes you turn it too quickly, sometimes too slowly. Plus, as with the accelerator, you're always having to add or wind off lock to get your turning radius right.
The way the suspension deals with bumps leaves much to be desired too: the damping simply isn't sophisticated enough to keep up with the short, sharp ruts that are so much a feature of our pockmarked urban thoroughfares. The combination of these three traits makes urban use tiring and rather unpleasant.
It doesn't improve much at speed, either, where the steering's vagueness means you constantly have to make small inputs to keep the noise pointing where you want it. And while the suspension does settle a little at speed, there's a lot of tyre noise, so it's hardly a serene experience.
Frustrating driver aids
I haven't even started on the driver 'aids'. These are truly awful. Indeed, I spent a good deal of time with the Jaecoo pondering which was the more frustrating.
Is it the lane departure warning, which seizes the wheel and yanks it toward the kerb if you so much as inch toward the central white line? Is it the speed limit detection, which bongs at you repeatedly, telling you you're exceeding the speed limit, which it has invariably got wrong?
In fact it's none of these. It's the driver monitoring system which, should you have the temerity to look away from the straight-ahead for more than a second, bleeps and flashes up a message chiding you for doing so.
This despite the fact that you are forced to look away, frequently, because Jaecoo has shoehorned all of the 7's many functions into a menu that's six presses deep in the touchscreen.
However, given the vague steering, you're well advised not to look away from the road for too long anyway.
On this basis, you probably won't feel much like hustling your Jaecoo along a back road. That's no bad thing, because it gets rather floppy when you do, with quite a bit of body lean and shudder through the steering column over faster bumps.
There's not much in the way of front-end traction, either, which means powering out of a slow bend usually results in the inside wheel spinning noisily, even when you aren't accelerating aggressively.
But it's not all bad, in fact some of it is really good. The powertrain's refinement, for one thing, is exemplary. The engine is quieter than most plug-ins, while the change-over between petrol and electric modes is beautifully handled, so much so that you can rarely tell it's happening.
The brakes have clearly been finessed, too, with regenerative and friction braking integrated extremely well.
The Telegraph verdict
These pluses, sadly, are not enough to compensate for the 7's myriad flaws. And nor is its price. Yes, it's cheap but that only buys you so much goodwill. What's the point in saving a few quid on your monthly payments – or, more likely, your company car tax bill – if you grow to resent the car you climb into each morning?
There will be those for whom none of this matters and for whom that cost saving is all. It's cheap, it's spacious and for some that will be enough.
My advice is not to think like one of them. For while the Jaecoo 7 might look as though it's solved all of the plug-in hybrid's problems, in reality it's brought too many of its own with it.
The facts
On test: Jaecoo 7 SHS Luxury
Body style: five-door SUV
On sale: now
How much? £35,165 on the road (range from £30,115)
How fast? 112mph, 0-62mph in 8.5sec
How economical? 403mpg (WLTP Combined)
Engine & gearbox: 1,499cc four-cylinder petrol engine, combined variable ratio/electric gearbox, front-wheel drive
Electric powertrain: AC permanent magnet synchronous motor with18.3kWh battery, 40kW on-board charger, Type 2/CCS charging socket
Electric-only range: 56 miles
Maximum power/torque: 201bhp/229lb ft
CO2 emissions: 23g/km (WLTP Combined)
VED: £110 first year, then £195
Warranty: 7 years / 100,000 miles (notable limitations to cover after 3 years / 40,000 miles)
Spare wheel as standard: no (not available)
The rivals
248bhp, 235.4mpg, £40,685 on the road
Kia's plug-in Sportage is pricier to buy, and with higher CO2 emissions, it'll also be costlier to tax as a company car. The payoff is that it'll be much nicer to drive than the Jaecoo – not to mention more powerful, too. Worth pointing out, too, that the Sportage has a far more comprehensive seven-year warranty – important to note if you're buying it yourself.
Citroën C5 Aircross PHEV Max
222bhp, 220.9mpg, £37,360 on the road
It's not long for this world, but the C5 Aircross is still a good car, endowed with great interior flexibility and one of the most comfortable suspension setups in the class. It isn't all that much more costly than the Jaecoo, and while its electric range is nowhere near as impressive, it's a compromise worth making.
Volkswagen Tiguan 1.5 TSI eHybrid Life
201bhp, 707mpg, £42,665 on the road
You might be deterred by the high price of the Tiguan – but if you're a company car user-chooser, the 77-mile electric range means it slips into a lower tax band than any of its rivals, meaning it won't actually cost that much more than the Jaecoo. And this is a far superior car, with a classier interior, more space, and a much more controlled driving experience. Worth every extra penny, in short.