Pop your Chery? 9 things you must know about the Chinese SUV brand's big UK plans
Four SUVs will launch by next spring, with the mid-size Tiggo 7 and 8 leading the way
Out of the limelight, BYD! Chery, the Chinese car maker that exports the most cars around the world, has arrived in the UK market. It will launch two midsize SUVs – the Tiggo 7 and Tiggo 8 – in the next few weeks, claiming they will become the UK’s cheapest plug-in hybrid and most affordable seven-seat SUV respectively.
Chery reckons those headlines are compelling sales pitches for new car hunters who have vastly reduced choice in the £20-30k price bracket due to rising prices.
But are Chery cars a good proposition? Where will you buy and service one? How long is the warranty? Auto Express attended the brand’s UK launch at London’s O2 Arena and spoke to executives to bring you everything you need to know about Chery.
What is Chery Automobiles? Pitch this brand to me…
China might be the land of the dragon, but Auto Express asked UK CEO Gary Lan to enter TV’s Dragon’s Den and pitch his brand to us. “Chery is for everyone, Chery is for family,” he replied. “There’s an opportunity for us to provide a good car with technology [at an] accessible price. Around the world Chery is already making people happy.”
Almost literally, the brand takes its name from the word ‘cheery’ and its advertising strapline – which blitzed public O2-goers with digital and poster billboards – is ‘Find Your Happy’. Having sat through a clunky history lesson, we can boil down Chery’s back story into: founded as an engine maker in 1997, it built its first car in 1999 and began exports in 2001. Last year it sold 2.6-million cars and has racked up 15-million in its 26-year history.
What wasn’t mentioned was Chery’s links to JLR: it has assembled Land Rovers and Jaguars in a Chinese joint-venture since 2014, and has the licence to create upcoming SUVs under the Freelander brand. This relationship will have fed Chery’s “20-year preparation” to become sufficiently competitive to enter the UK market. And truth be told it’s already here, having launched the Omoda and Jaecoo brands in January 2025 – and made big market inroads since.
Ah! How is Chery positioned beside Omoda and Jaecoo then?
Jaecoo is the more premium brand, with its upright SUV styling and vertical grille reminiscent of Range Rovers. Its Jaecoo 7 SUV starts at £30,115 for the 1.6-litre turbocharged petrol, and £35,165 for the 201bhp plug-in hybrid. No need to memorise those drivetrain specs because they are the same on the Chery Tiggo 7, which costs from £24,995, and the equivalent Omoda.
Talking of which, Omoda offers “more fashionable, forward-looking crossovers, appealing to a younger generation” explains Gary Lan, who runs all three brands in the UK. That means cascading, shimmering grilles like the Hyundai Tucson introduced and edgier surfacing – at similar prices to the equivalent Chery.
It’s a real cookie cutter approach to new models, with those three SUVs sharing the same fundamental chassis and being similar in length, all measuring between 4.5 and 4.6-metres in length.
So what does Chery stand out for – design?
Chery displayed the Tiggo 7 and Tiggo 8 launch cars, the flagship Tiggo 9 that will arrive around the end of 2025 and the 4.3m-long Tiggo 4 which is due by March 2026. Four SUVs priced from about £20-40k on sale within nine months.
They all have a strong family resemblance but that family is rather non-descript: it’s like the original DS 7 diluted with a bit of Ford and Audi. Perhaps the brief to the European and Chinese design studio was to create a neat and tidy range of SUVs that won’t offend anyone, but equally won’t stand out.
A request to name an original aspect of the design led to this response: “We definitely compare and look at what competitors do. We don't copy, but we do analyse and we try to learn from others.”
Chery stands out for value
Chery intends to win on value, like every other Chinese car maker. Auto Express asked UK CEO Gary Lan and he skewered Europe’s legacy car brands in one soundbite. “Ten years ago, 1 million [UK cars were registered] in the £20-30,000 price range. Now it’s shrunk [dramatically]. There’s an opportunity for us to provide a good car with technology for people in that price range.”
The continent’s car makers may excuse this by citing energy price inflation, supply chain shocks, costly regulation and tariffs but prices rose as Covid squeezed supply and they must double down on restoring affordability. Because Chery is coming at them hard.
The Volkswagen Tiguan-sized Tiggo 7 starts at £24,995. The entry-level Aspire model has a long list of equipment: dual-zone air-con, adaptive cruise control, Sony audio, wireless smartphone, font and rear parking sensors and standard Apple CarPlay/Android Auto on its 12.3-inch central touchscreen.
Cars inflated with expensive options can undermine a car’s used value, but Chery execs are confident that setting (and not discounting) keen prices and their policy of making everything standard will help the car retain value.
It runs that ubiquitous 145bhp 1.6-litre turbo petrol with a dual-clutch transmission (DCT), which doesn’t look too clever on fuel economy: Chery quotes 40mpg, while the equivalent Jaecoo 7 emits 169g/km of CO2.
A more powerful, 158bhp Hyundai Tucson manual returns 41.5mpg and 154g/km of CO2; the more fuel-efficient DCT posts figures of 44.8mpg and 142g/km, though that drivetrain also gets an efficiency boost from mild-hybrid assistance.
What’s this about the UK’s cheapest plug-in hybrid?
The Tiggo 7 gets – like the Jaecoo 7 Deluxe, Omoda 9 and Tiggo 8 – the option of the group’s plug-in Super Hybrid System. The focus is on efficiency, with the 1.5-litre engine running the fuel-saving Miller combustion cycle, a dual-clutch transmission that minimises losses and a 201bhp electric motor.
Powered by a 18.4kWh LFP battery, the SHS has a 56-mile electric range and cleverly retains an electric reserve, so that it can flick in and out of electric-only drive whereas many PHEVs just default to petrol power. Chery claims a combined range of 745 miles when both fuel tank and battery are maxxed, and the Tiggo 7 can be charged on a domestic AC charger and public DC chargers.
The Tiggo 7 will be the UK’s cheapest plug-in hybrid at £29,995; the bigger, seven-seat Tiggo 8 SHS (think Skoda Kodiaq rival) costs £33,545. Its entry model costs £28,545, which Chery claims is the cheapest seven-seat SUV on the market. The term SUV is doing a lot of heavy lifting: the Dacia Jogger – a seven-seat estate with SUV design cues – is seven-grand cheaper.
Reviews of SUVs from Chery sister brands Omoda and Jaecoo cite coarse engines, hesitant gearboxes and lumpy chassis. But so were Korean cars initially, and the industry has coined the phrase ‘China speed’ noting how fast they bring improvements.
We’ll be driving the Tiggo 7 and Tiggo 8 in early September, and will bring you our verdicts very soon.
Where can I buy – and service – a Chery?
The brand will launch with 25 retailers, with plans to extend it to more than 100 within a year to deliver nationwide coverage. Some will share their sites with Jaecoo and Omoda franchises, but the commitment is that the Chery retailer will have a standalone building and entrance.
“Every dealership will have a service centre,” pledges Gary Lan. “But I recognise that’s a very high cost, so they can share the service centre.” Which makes perfect sense given the high technical similarity between Omoda, Jaecoo and Chery SUVs.
Chery Group has a distribution centre in Coventry and a contract with DHL to get parts to retailers within 24-48-hours to minimise vehicle downtime.
And what happens if something goes wrong?
Chery backs its new cars with a seven-year/100,000-mile warranty, supplemented by 8-year battery cover on Super Hybrids. RAC Home Start cover is also part of the package.
And what about pure electric versions?
While Omoda and Jaecoo have E5 electric versions, Chery has elected to initially attack the majority of the UK car market with its petrol and hybrid drivetrains. Not that electric power isn’t on the cards in due course, but the Tiggo 4 shows Chery’s priority to launch with the 1.5-litre petrol and a non-plug-in hybrid to keep prices down and consideration broad.
And Chery sold out the O2 Arena? Ford couldn’t have done that in its prime
Chery launched the brand at London’s O2, not in the 20,000-seat main arena but the Indigo event centre. Some 400 media and existing retailers watched the show.
The spectacle looked slick, the entertainment random with an orchestra playing ‘90s house music, DJ and host Reggie Yates giving it his all and street dancers Flawless performing. When the troupe started trying to drag the audience onto the dance floor, Auto Express has never seen car retailers move to the bar so quickly – and that’s saying something.
The comms felt equally clunky: a brand history lesson, powertrain technical detail that had most attendees glazing over and one exec referring to the screen behind while asking us to “see the photo of my backside”.
Regardless, the intent was clear. Streaked by red lasers on the stage, the Chery Tiggo 7 and Tiggo 8 launch models loomed over proceedings, while the compact Tiggo 4 and flagship Tiggo 9 stood in the wings. Four SUVs, from compact to large in size, from £20 to £40k in price, poised to storm the UK market in the next nine months.
Indeed Omoda and Jaecoo have sold 19,000 UK cars in the first seven months of the year. And buyers who might otherwise be priced out of the new car market might just fancy a big Chery SUV loaded with kit at affordable prices. With no UK tariffs to keep them at bay, this is no premonition – just automotive’s new world order.
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