Chery is joining the plug-in hybrid market with two new family SUVs it is marketing as 'Super Hybrids', set to wear RAV4-rivalling price tags.
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The first hybrid car from Chery in Australia – the 2025 Chery Tiggo 7 CSH – could become Australia's most affordable plug-in hybrid when it arrives in showrooms mid-year, rated with a 90km electric driving range.
Drive understands the cheaper of the two model grades of the Tiggo 7 CSH – short for Chery Super Hybrid – will target the entry-level Toyota RAV4 Hybrid on price, at $42,260 plus on-road costs.
It will compete with the larger, but similarly priced BYD Sealion 6 Essential ($42,990 plus on-roads, or about $45,500 to $46,500 drive-away) and related Jaecoo J7 SHS ($47,990 drive-away) as Australia's cheapest PHEVs.
Pricing is yet to be confirmed for the Tiggo 8 CSH, but it is expected to comfortably undercut the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV ES ($57,990 drive-away) as the cheapest seven-seat PHEV on sale.
Both vehicles will arrive in facelifted form – wearing revised styling – and use the same 1.5-litre turbo-petrol engine, electric motor and 18.3kWh battery rated for 90km of electric range, and a 1200km quoted hybrid range.
Chery Australia chief operating officer Lucas Harris told Drive the company's plug-in hybrid tech is intended to avoid the "dreadful" driving experience of rivals when their batteries are on their "lowest state of charge".
"There's still a huge amount of people who are at that regular hybrid stage ... they're just moving off from conventional ICE [petrol and diesel] vehicles, and stepping into hybrid for the first time," he said.
"And the idea of a plug-in hybrid might be a little daunting, because they've got to plug it in.
"Whereas the big technological advancement that our hybrid systems have over the competitors is ... if you drive it as a hybrid and you never plug it in ... you still get all of that positive driving feeling, irrespective of whether you plugged it in or not.
"For a person who just wants a great efficiency hybrid, tick. Don't worry about the fact that you can plug it in. That's just an added bonus. Obviously there's a huge amount of benefits to plug it in, but if you don't want to, also fine."
A fuel consumption claim is yet to be published, but Harris claims he has seen "4.3, up to about 5.5 litres per 100 kilometres" from his Tiggo 7 PHEV test vehicle, despite not plugging it in for two months.
The Tiggo 7 and Tiggo 8 plug-in hybrids debut a facelifted appearance, with new front-end styling, restyled tail-lights for the Tiggo 7, and interior changes for some of the vehicles.
If the plug-in hybrids are popular enough, Chery may elect to discontinue – or cut down – the non-hybrid range, Harris said.
"It'll be just hybrid only for now. And we'll have a look at the current ICE [petrol] is going," Harris said, when asked if the new styling will spread to the petrol-only versions, particularly the Tiggo 7.
"We will launch with the Super Hybrid in July and see how it goes. I'm very confident about where we're going to be able to position the price for this vehicle.
"So we may have a situation where it performs quite well as a hybrid variant, and we may not actually need to have the ICE variants there, or potentially only one ICE variant at an entry price point. And then have the hybrid stuff as the bulk of the line-up."
Prices for the regular petrol Tiggo 7 – still branded Tiggo 7 Pro – range from $29,990 to $33,990 drive-away, while the Tiggo 8 Pro Max petrol is priced from $38,990 to $43,990 drive-away.
Harris said Chery would "absolutely not" need to delete non-hybrid variants to meet Australia's strict CO2 emissions rules for new cars, known as the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES), but said without the plug-in hybrids, it would be a "challenge".
The Chery executive is unfazed by the end of the fringe benefits tax (FBT) exemption on PHEVs from April 1, which drove a recent surge in sales of the vehicle type.
"It's totally irrelevant for us. I know that others have relied on it, and you can see a bit of a dent in the [monthly sales] results now that it's come off," Harris told Drive.
"It's not really, to be honest, been a consideration for us at all. We certainly wouldn't complain if the government decided they wanted to bring that back, but it's certainly not a deal breaker."
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Alex Misoyannis has been writing about cars since 2017, when he started his own website, Redline. He contributed for Drive in 2018, before joining CarAdvice in 2019, becoming a regular contributing journalist within the news team in 2020. Cars have played a central role throughout Alex’s life, from flicking through car magazines at a young age, to growing up around performance vehicles in a car-loving family. Highly Commended - Young Writer of the Year 2024 (Under 30) Rising Star Journalist, 2024 Winner Scoop of The Year - 2024 Winner
