2026 Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid review

Our verdict

The Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid offers excellent fuel economy, plenty of equipment and a surprisingly affordable price for a plug-in hybrid SUV. The cabin also presents far above its price point. The catch is the way it drives, which never quite shakes off the feeling that you bought the cheap one.

What does the Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid cost in Australia?

The biggest selling point of the Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid is its price.

Chery now prices the Super Hybrid by state, and in Victoria the Urban Super Hybrid is around $36,500 driveaway, with the Ultimate Super Hybrid around $40,600. Both have been as low as $34,990 and $38,990 driveaway on promotion.

The Ultimate adds a panoramic sunroof, heated and ventilated front seats, ambient lighting, an eight-speaker Sony stereo, a wireless phone charger and a 360-degree camera. That step up of about $4,000 is worth thinking about. The Urban already covers the essentials most families care about, so the Ultimate is more of a treat-yourself proposition than a must-have.

Either way, you’re paying petrol-SUV money for a plug-in hybrid, and that’s the whole point. If you don’t need the plug, the regular petrol Tiggo 7 is cheaper again.

Against rivals, the maths stays friendly. A BYD Sealion 6 asks more, and a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV is in a different price bracket entirely. The BYD Sealion 5 now sits right alongside it on price, and the smaller Atto 2 DM-i undercuts it. For a properly sized medium SUV with a plug, the Chery is still hard to argue with.

View Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid driveaway pricing and specifications →

What does the Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid look like?

The Tiggo 7 plays it safe and gets away with it. At 4535mm long and 1864mm wide it sits dead centre of the medium-SUV class, with a clean, slightly anonymous shape that will not offend anyone and will not turn many heads either. There is no signature design flourish, no party trick at the front. It just looks like a tidy, modern SUV, which at this price is no bad thing.

The exterior has some nice details, including LED lighting front and rear and 18-inch alloy wheels. The Ultimate's Star Silver and the various premium paints add some interest. Parked outside a school pickup line, nobody is going to guess it cost around forty grand.

What is the Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid like inside?

The interior is surprisingly impressive considering how little the Tiggo 7 costs.

Twin 12.3-inch displays dominate the dash, the synthetic leather looks convincing, and there is a clear Mercedes-Benz influence in the switchgear and speaker grilles. From the driver's seat at a standstill, you would happily believe this was a more expensive car.

Spend longer in it and the cracks show. There are hollow-feeling plastics lower in the cabin, and some of the trim choices, like the carbon-look inserts, try a little too hard. The bigger issue is the driving position. The transmission tunnel crowds your left knee, the footwell feels pinched, and the steering wheel does not rise as far as taller drivers will want. The seats look good but the base is firm and the bolsters can nag on a longer run. None of this is a deal-breaker, but it stops the cabin feeling as resolved as it first appears.

Ergonomically it is a mixed bag. The physical climate panel below the screen is a welcome idea, though it washes out in direct sun to the point where you cannot read it. There is wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, but no native satellite navigation, so you are leaning on your phone for maps. The Chery companion app does not function locally either, so remote preconditioning is off the table.

How practical is the Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid?

Better than the driving position suggests. The back seat is the Tiggo's strong suit, with real head and leg room, a long enough seat base to support adult thighs, a centre armrest with cupholders, map pockets and a USB port. Three across for the school run is genuinely fine.

Storage up front is plentiful with a deep centre console bin, dual cupholders and a useful tray, although Chery has parked the emergency window-break hammer right in the middle of that tray, which eats into space you would rather use for a phone and wallet. Odd packaging call.

Boot space is sensible for the class. Chery does not quote a hybrid-specific figure, but the related petrol car offers 356 litres with the seats up and 1676 litres folded, which is competitive. The trade-offs are familiar cost-saving ones: the Urban makes do with a manual tailgate, and there is no spare wheel anywhere in the range, just a tyre repair kit. For most suburban buyers that is liveable. For regional drivers, less so.

What is the Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid like to drive?

The Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid is easy to live with and frustrating to enjoy.

Start with the good. The 150kW electric motor gives the car a genuinely lively step off the line. In town, on electric power alone, it feels brisk and effortless, slotting into traffic gaps and merging onto a freeway with more urgency than the price tag implies. The single-speed hybrid transmission keeps everything smooth and when the 105kW 1.5-litre turbo petrol engine joins in, it does so quietly. As a relaxed urban runabout, it works.

Unfortunately, the driving experience isn't nearly as convincing once you get beyond city speeds.

The steering is light to the point of feeling disconnected, with a slightly synthetic, wriggly quality just off centre that makes the car feel busier than it should. The throttle is the bigger annoyance, hanging for a beat before it responds, so you learn to lean on it early.

The drive modes promise to fix this and largely do not. Sport adds a little weight to the wheel and not much else.

Body control is ordinary. There is noticeable roll and pitch when you press on through corners, yet the ride is firm enough over sharp edges to keep reminding you this is a budget build. The flip side is that it soaks up speed humps and broken surfaces with surprising composure, so around the suburbs it rides acceptably.

Then there is the start-up theatre. There is no on-off button. To get going you sit down, buckle up, press the brake and select a gear, at which point the car decides it is ready. It is the sort of thing you adapt to within a week, but it is needlessly fiddly, and you will catch yourself wondering whether the car is actually on.

The system also refuses to swap between drive and reverse unless you are completely stationary, which turns a quick three-point shuffle into a test of patience.

How efficient is the Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid?

This is the reason the car exists, and it largely delivers. Chery claims 1.4L/100km on the combined cycle, which is a laboratory fairytale you should ignore. What matters is the real world, and the real world is genuinely good.

The 18.3kWh lithium iron phosphate battery is rated at 93km of electric range on the lenient NEDC cycle. Expect a true 70 to 80km in mixed driving, which is more than enough to cover most daily commutes on electrons alone. Charge at home overnight and you can go weeks barely touching the 60-litre fuel tank. Let the battery run flat and the system holds back roughly 20% of charge to keep operating as a regular series-parallel hybrid, at which point you will see figures in the 4L/100km range. That is excellent for a medium SUV, and it is the number that should anchor your buying decision.

Charging is straightforward through Type 2 AC or CCS2 DC, with DC charging at up to 40kW taking the battery from 30 to 80% in around 20 minutes.

Ownership costs are another tick. Servicing is capped for seven years and mostly very cheap, with one notable lump at the sixth visit. Roadside assistance starts at 12 months and extends with each dealer service, up to seven years.

Is the Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid safe?

The Super Hybrid carries a five-star ANCAP rating from 2025, applying to Tiggo 7s built from mid-2025, including the plug-in hybrid.

The standard safety kit is generous for the money: autonomous emergency braking, adaptive cruise control with stop-and-go, blind-spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert, lane-keep and lane-departure assist, speed-sign recognition and driver attention monitoring. A reversing camera is standard, with the full 360-degree system reserved for the Ultimate.

It is not flawless. The driver monitoring is over-eager and will beep at you for glancing at the screen, and there is no lane-centring function to pair with the adaptive cruise.

ANCAP’s assessment also marked it down for reversing autonomous emergency braking, so stay alert when backing out.

What are the main competitors to the Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid?

The BYD Sealion 6 is the obvious cross-shop and the Tiggo's most direct threat. It costs a little more, but it brings a polished plug-in hybrid system and a strong reputation, and many buyers will happily pay the premium for the badge confidence. If your budget can stretch, drive both back to back.

The BYD Sealion 5 is closely matched on size and now priced right alongside the Tiggo, so this one comes down to which you prefer to drive.

The MG HS Super Hybrid pairs smooth hybrid performance with a more resolved on-road feel than the Chery manages. Buyers prioritising the way a car drives over raw equipment count should put it on the list.

The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV plays in a much higher price bracket, but it remains the benchmark for polish, all-wheel-drive capability and ownership reassurance. Cross-shop it only if your budget has genuinely moved beyond the Tiggo's, because the gap in price is real.

The Jaecoo J7 SHS is Chery's own sibling under the Omoda Jaecoo umbrella, offering a similar plug-in hybrid concept with a more premium finish for more money. It’s worth a look if you like the Tiggo’s idea but want the cabin to feel a notch above.

If it were my money, I’d take the Urban Super Hybrid, but I’d drive a Sealion 5 first, because the price gap has all but closed.

Should I buy the Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid?

Buy it with your head, not your heart, and you will be very happy.

If you charge at home, do most of your driving around town, and want plug-in hybrid economy for the price of an ordinary petrol SUV, very little gets close on value. The cabin punches above its price, the safety credentials are sorted, the running costs are low, and the EV range covers real commutes.

There are some compromises, particularly the vague steering, delayed throttle response and cramped driving position. If you enjoy driving, there are better options available.

For the value-first family buyer doing the sums, the Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid is one of the smartest cheap PHEV plays on the market.