What is a Super Hybrid? | 2025 Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid Review
This is the Cherry Tigo 7 Super Hybrid. And no, it doesn’t wear a cape or shoot lasers out of its headlights. Is it super fast? No. Super luxurious? Well, not unless you think fake carbon fiber trim is luxurious. Is it super efficient? Well, we’ll see about that. What it is, however, is clever marketing lingo designed to convince you that this is more than just another regular plug-in hybrid. But is it? Come with us for our first drive of the new Tigo 7 Super Hybrid to find out. The new Cherry Tigo 7 Super Hybrid has officially touched down in Australia. Priced from just under $40,000, it’s a midsize SUV with five seats that blends affordability with the benefits of a fuelefficient plug-in hybrid powertrain. But if this one is a little out of your price range, the Tigo 7 also comes as a petrol, which will save you around 10K. Let’s start with what’s under the bonnet because you might be a little confused by all the terminology here because I know I certainly was. Super hybrid is a term used by several car makers including Cher’s subbrand JU as well as J and MG among others. And essentially all super hybrid really is is the latest and most advanced if I can open this version of plug-in hybrid technology. You’ve got a petrol engine, an electric motor, and a battery pack. And because there are two power sources, petrol and electric, you need to fill it up with petrol, but you also need to fill it up with electricity. Now, in the case of the Tigo 7, it’s a 1.5 L turbo 4 cylinder petrol engine, and it’s madeated to a 150 kW electric motor. There’s also an 18 kWh battery pack, but unlike other manufacturers, Cherry doesn’t quote a combined power figure for this car, except for saying that if you add the petrol and the electric power figures together, you get a combined output of 255 kW. But that’s not very realistic because a each power source generates peak power at different times and b because it’s about the same amount of power as an Audi SQ5, which is much sportier. and this does not feel that athletic. Instead, it’s all about efficiency. And one of the key selling points of this car is its combined driving range of around 1,200 km or up to,200 km. That is partly thanks to this car’s 60 L fuel tank. Most of its rivals only have a 55 L fuel tank and you can also fill this up with cheaper 91 ron unled petrol whereas some of its rivals need at least 95. The Tigo7 Super Hybrid can be charged via AC or DC fast charging. However, we’re at the local launch and details are very thin, so we don’t know how long it’ll take to recharge at the moment. If we do find out though, we’ll put it on the screen here, but so far Cherry hasn’t told us. It comes in two trim grades, urban and ultimate, and both come jam-packed with standard equipment. This is the entry level version, but you wouldn’t really know it. You still get dual 12.3 in displays, leather appointed seats. It all feels rather premium in here. And if you’ve ever been in the Tigo 7 petrol, all the materials and the layout are pretty much identical, so you’ll feel right at home. But if you want a few more premium features like heated and ventilated front seats, a panoramic sunroof, wireless phone charging, or a 360° camera, you’ll have to spend another 4K and go up to the Ultimate. The second row is very similar again to the petrol powered Tigo7. And amenity is overall pretty good. This center armrest has two cup holders. You’ve got two air vents here, but only one USBA port, so you might have people fighting over that. There’s a little bit of storage with some pockets here, but I don’t really know what you’d fit in there. Um, then you’ve got seat back pockets and some more storage in the door down here, drink or coffee cup holders. I don’t know whose that is, but I guess it’s mine. Now, the other thing, um, I will say is there’s heaps of headroom. I’m 166 cm tall in case you need a reference. And I’ve got heaps of headroom there. And leg room is pretty good, too. And you can even put your feet right underneath the seats. They’re not like the front seat isn’t really low slung, so there’s plenty of room under there for some feet, which means you can kind of stretch out a little bit. The seats themselves, there’s not a lot of uh like bolstering support. So, depending on how the driver is driving, you might get thrown around a bit, but yeah, they’re overall relatively comfortable. I would like some reclining options, like a two two-stage recline, but you only just have the one level. Um, but overall, yeah, it’s not a bad place to be. Now, if you look in the boot of a petrol powered TIG7, you’ve got 626 L of boot space and a full size spare under the floor. This being the super hybrid, it’s obviously got a lot more electrical components and things to package in. So, the boot from here sort of looks pretty similar. It’s a nice flat loading area. Um, yeah, looks pretty decent size. Then under here, because you’ve got all that stuff underneath, you haven’t got a spare tire. You’ve got this inflated goo, which is pretty standard fair for most new cars these days. And that’s it. Charging cable, no room for a spare, unless you’re going to stick one on here and compromise your boot space. So, so far, nothing really super about this car. Let’s take it for a drive and see if that changes. In some plug-in hybrid systems, the petrol engine is there more so as a generator, while it’s the electric motor that drives the wheels. But in this case, the petrol and electric motor can drive this vehicle independently or they can work in tandem. It really just depends on the driving conditions. So up to speeds of about 80 km an hour, EV power is prioritized until the battery gets too low. So if it gets to about 25%, it’ll kick in the petrol engine. So what Cherry says uh differentiates the Super Hybrid from just a regular plug-in hybrid is that it’ll never drain the battery completely. So it’ll always reserve some little bit of electricity in the battery and it’ll never go below 10% is what they actually say. And that means that you won’t be compromising fuel economy. So, in like the first sort of examples of the Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid, for example, if you drained that battery, you’d just be left with the petrol engine and you’d be relying on that to lug around all that extra weight from the battery and the electric system. Um, and your fuel economy wouldn’t be that good. So, that’s one of the key differences with this super hybrid terminology. It’s supposed to give you great fuel economy even if you never plug it in. And that’s one of the highlights of this car. Although, I’m not sure that that is the case. But again, if we uh get some more time with this car, which we will at a later date, we’ll have more time to actually test fuel economy and and how well it goes without plugging it in to charge when that battery gets low. But again, that’s not really the spirit of a plug-in hybrid. And that’s really not how you’re going to get the most out of a plug-in hybrid or a super hybrid. You should be filling it full of fuel, obviously, and plugging it in and topping up that battery to get the most out of the fuel economy. As I mentioned before, this doesn’t feel quite as potent or athletic as an Audi SQ5, for example, that has 250 odd kW of power, but there’s still plenty of performance there. It’s just not obviously a performance SUV. But if you put your foot down even slightly, there’s this really nice surge of power and it’ll get up to speed really quickly, which means it’s great for overtaking maneuvers or if you’re merging onto a freeway. It picks up speed really well, even from about 80ks into 100ks. You hardly hear the petrol engine as well. So, right now it’s in hybrid mode, which means it’s working um both together, both the petrol and the electric motor. But it’s really quiet. I mean, they said they did they’ve done a lot of um work with the sound deadening of this car, but I think that’s more so that more so comes through with just what’s under the bonnet in terms of the sound deadening. You really don’t hear the petrol engine at all. And it is very very quiet. It’s not the most refined SUV. The steering wheel is just a little bit vague and it feels artificially light to me. Again, that’s fine around town and if you’re doing most of your driving in sort of suburban areas, it means that it’s really easy to maneuver. But when you do some higher speed driving or some more sort of enthusiastic driving, country roads and cornering, you start to feel that a bit more and it just feels a little bit vague. Um, and sort of just you don’t really get any feedback. There are a few other quirks that you’ve got to get used to with this car, which again, if you live with it, you will get used to it pretty quickly. There’s no onoff button for the car. So, when you hop in with the key, you turn the vehicle on by sitting down and putting your foot on the brake and then everything comes to life. There’s no physical handbrake either. Um, so put your seat belt on, pop it into drive, and it automatically releases the handbrake and off you go. Um, so it’s it’s easy in that respect. Um, but if you’re like you’ve got to have your seat belt on before you can move off. So, if you’re just doing a quick, you know, drive out of the garage to wash the car or whatever, it can get annoying. But, I think that’s something that you’d get used to, oh, the car won’t move because I haven’t got my seat belt on or which you shouldn’t do anyway, even if you’re just moving out of the garage. But, I mean, we all do little things like that. And there’s little quirks that you’ve got to get used to. Something that um I’ve been really impressed with though is the driver assist aids. And that’s something that Cher’s put a lot of work into and it really needed to because when it relaunched in Australia a couple of years ago with the Emoto 5, there was a lot of negative feedback from us as well um as a customers other media. Um the driver assist aids were really poorly calibrated. Um but yeah, as I said, they’ve done a lot of work um over the last year in the leadup to these cars and all of its latest cars really. And yeah, I’ve I’ve found the driver assist a dates to be really good. Um the driver monitoring system, so there’s a little um little sensor or camera above the steering wheel here that watches your eyes. It hardly comes on when I mean like I’ve been looking at the camera a few times and and it’s come on maybe once. Um, but it’s really unintrusive compared to what Cher’s systems used to be like. Um, and a lot of new Chinese car makers have just seemed to not get that calibrated well. Um, but yeah, this is not the case with this car. And there the other thing is usually they will turn cuz we’re on a launch a local launch. So usually they’ll turn a few things off and turn the sensitivity down to make the car look good and not annoy us. Um but there is no sensitivity setting for the driver monitoring system. It’s just an onoff and it is on right now. So it is doing a pretty good job. Um only a couple of times yesterday when we we went for a drive did it beep because I was looking at the touch screen. Um but yeah, overall not intrusive, really good. Most of the systems are really good. Um the lane assist though was a little bit annoying to me and that’s something that um I think could be simplified because there’s three different options for uh the lane functions. There’s lane departure prevention, there’s lane departure warning, and then there’s an emergency, I think, lane keep assist. A lot of other cars, there’s just a button on the steering wheel that you can just hold down and turn off the lane assist functions and everything is fine. But with this one, you’ve got to go into a menu, hit three different buttons, and then turn them all off if that’s what you want to do. And that’s what I’ve done because the I think it’s the lane departure prevention is the main the main one that is the worst because if you’re not in the dead center of the lane, it just keeps it’s just it’s not even tugging at the wheel. It’s um like twitching and it’s very annoying. Um and that automatically comes on when you’ve got the uh adaptive cruise control in its like intelligent mode. So, it’s sort of like a um sort of like a semi-autonomous driving system. Um obviously not fully autonomous. You can’t take your hands off the wheel, but it just twitches constantly and it’s so annoying and it and it really detracts from the driving experience. But when I worked out yesterday that I could turn it off by holding the button down and just having adaptive cruise control on rather than the intelligent cruise control, it was much nicer to drive. So, all in all, yes, the safety systems have gotten a lot better, but they’re still not perfect. But I think you’ve got to remember that for a car that’s starts at this one’s $40,000, there’s a lot of stuff in this car. It’s great value. So, you can’t really expect perfection in every area. Any car, you can’t really expect perfection. So, I guess coming back to the original question, what is super about this super hybrid? It’s in the name really. It should be super efficient. And look, it’s hard to give you a definitive answer on just how efficient it is. Cherry says you’ll get about 1,200 km of driving from a full battery and a full tank of fuel. And when we started driving these cars, the battery wasn’t full. So the the driving range only said about 980 km. Um the fuel consumption we saw as low as about 3.8 L. So yeah, again it’s hard to say. We need to get this car and drive it for a longer period to really work out just how economical it is. But um I guess it’s not super fast and it’s not super luxurious. Although it is pretty good for the price, but super efficient, yes, it could be, but again, we’ve got to spend more time with it to make sure. Overall, it’s a package that’s not perfect, but the fundamentals are there, and few of its rivals can match the value equation on offer. Well, that’s the 2025 Cherry Tig 7 Super Hybrid in a nutshell. Be sure to have your say in the comments. Do you think this $40,000 plug-in hybrid medium SUV is worthy of its super
The 2025 Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid has landed in Australia and it’s gunning for value-conscious SUV buyers with its sub-$40K drive-away price.
👉 Full Review: https://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/chery-tiggo-7-super-hybrid-2025-review-149953/
On paper, it outguns all of its direct PHEV rivals in affordability, while boasting up to 1200km of total range and around 90km of EV-only driving.
Priced from just $39,990 drive-away, the entry-level Urban variant massively undercuts established rivals like the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV ($57,290) and even newer entrants like the GWM Haval H6 Ultra PHEV ($47,990).
It’s powered by a 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine (105kW/215Nm) paired with a 150kW electric motor, working through a single-speed dedicated hybrid transmission and sending power to the front wheels. A reasonable 18.3kWh lithium iron phosphate battery supports electric-only commuting, with fast charging from 30–80% taking just 20 minutes (DC at 40kW).
Even better, it runs on regular 91 RON unleaded and features a 60-litre fuel tank, which is larger than many rivals.
Chery claims fuel consumption as low as 1.4L/100km, and our real-world test over 200km of highway and country roads returned 3.8L/100km, even without plugging in.
That said, there are still a few early teething issues: inconsistent driver aids, some ride harshness on rougher roads, and a few quirks in our test car (like floor mats from another model and a stubborn boot latch).
Still, with its mix of generous equipment, genuine efficiency and ultra-aggressive pricing, the Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid could be a game-changer in the budget PHEV space – assuming Chery can iron out the wrinkles before it hits Aussie driveways in big numbers.
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