Chery Tiggo 9 hybrid 2026 review Australia: New PHEV undercuts Toyota Kluger Hybrid family SUV
luxury technology. More on that later. Do you remember how electric vehicles used to be the next big things? Well, hybrids have made a comeback, and now we’re living in the age of the super hybrid. Let me introduce to you the Cherry Tigo 9 Super Hybrid. Super hybrids are plug-in hybrid electric vehicles with extra long ranges. This is a monster super hybrid. It’s got a giant battery. It’s got very long range. It uses hardly any fuel. It’s extremely affordable and it’s ridiculously good-looking. So, are there any downsides to the Cherry Tig 9 Super Hybrid? Yeah, there’s a couple. Come with me. Now, if you want to read my full review on the Cherry Tigo 9 Super Hybrid, you should go to carsguy.com.au. I don’t need to tell you that this is a ridiculously good-look SUV. I love this grill. Yes, it does look a little bit Audi, but I’m telling you now, Terry, it’s not the only brand to be inspired by Audi’s big hexisagonal grill. There’s there’s so many. I love the lines to this car. Actually, I love the color. This is Aurora Green. I think it looks spectacular. The light catches it. Looks beautiful. I love these multis-spoke wheels. They look very luxurious. Looking at the panel gaps, I think this is quite a big panel gap, but I’ve been staring at panels now for 15 years on new cars, and these are consistent even though they’re quite large. So, the build quality looks like it’s pretty good. Look at this glass house. How it comes down like that. That’s beautiful. And I love the way it curves around to the rear of the car as well. This tailgate, it’s very sy. There’s this is this is the design of the moment. And they all look a lot like this. But I like it. I like it a lot. Let me show you inside. This is a modern, minimalist, luxurious, refined cabin. Look, it’s not quite Lexus level, but for the price, and I’ll get to that in just a moment, the quality here is is is outstanding. Yes, there are some cheap sort of feeling hard plastics, but for the most part, there’s all these beautiful soft touch points, including leather seats as well. Okay, let’s talk about price. It’s on your screen right now. There’s only one grade in the Tigo 9 Super Hybrid range. It’s this one. It’s the ultimate and it comes with everything. Like, it’s loaded. You name a feature. It’s got a heated seats. It’s got a heated steering wheel. It’s got a wireless phone charger. It’s got a head-up display. It’s got it Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, sat nav. It has it. Dual zone climate control. It doesn’t have three zone in the back. So, but it does have directional events and a fan. Now, compared to say a Hyundai Palisade or a GWM tank plug-in hybrid, this is a lot more affordable. Let’s talk practicality. The Cherry Tig 9 is a 7seater SUV. I’m obviously in the second row here. I’m tall. I’m a giant test. I’m 189 cm tall. This is in my driving position. I’ve got room for my knees. I’ve got room for my head. It’s got a very high roof. seems to have a very high floor, but that’s probably because the battery is underneath and that raises it slightly. There’s mediumsiz door pockets. There’s a cup holders in the fold down armrest there. There’s hidey holes in the back of things. There’s a floating center console with storage underneath. It’s not ridiculously practical for an SUV this size, but it’s it’s not bad at all. Let me show you the boot. Quite a high boot lip here, which means you have to hoist your bags up over the top and a low tailgate. So, if you are tall like me, you could easily bonk your head. But if you’re short, it means that you’ll be able to reach the power button here. Now, the third row is currently up, and this is the space that you’ve got in the back here, which is sort of perfect for like a weekly shop. But if you want to increase the size of your cargo capacity, they just pop down like that. They’re not automatic. They’re just manual, but they are really easy. And that’s how much room you’ve got back there. Again, not enormous, but not small either. And again, easy to bring back up again when you’re done. You want to go for a drive? Let’s go for a drive. Okay, let’s go for a drive. Now, before we do, I just want to say one of the other features of the Tigo 9 Super Hybrid that I really, really like is that you don’t have to turn it on. There’s no ignition button. You just get in the car and it’s running and away you go. So that’s really convenient in terms of, you know, you walk over to the car, it unlocks itself and the car is already going. But it’s also a safety feature, too. So you might be in a car park at night or on a dark street. The car will turn its lights on as it detects the key in your pocket or your handbag as you’re walking over to it. It unlocks the doors that the door handles pop out, get into the car, and as soon as you sit in the seat, it switches on and then you can just drive off. So, it’s as much a convenience feature as it is a safety feature. I I really like that as well. All right, let’s drive. Now, for the most part, the Tig 9 Super Hybrid drives like an electric vehicle. That’s because it’s got a gigantic battery. It’s got three electric motors. It’s got two electric motors at the front and one electric motor at the back. And around town at low speeds, it’ll just drive using those electric motors. So, it’s quiet, it’s smooth, it’s it’s quick to accelerate, all the things that you get with an electric vehicle. When you go up a hill and you put your foot down on the accelerator, the petrol engine kicks in. So, the petrol engine is a 1.5 L petrol engine, four-cylinder, and together with the engine and the motors, the output is huge. It’s 315 kW and 580 Newton meters. That’s way too much. That’s That’s V8 petrol sports car power. So, yes, the acceleration when you put your foot down is is really good. I won’t do it here because you need a lot of space. I’ll dab it a little bit. There’s a little bit of a delay. There’s a little bit of delay with most electric vehicles. There’s like it’s instant, but because this is a hybrid, there’s a short delay when you put your foot down, but still when you begin to accelerate, wo, it’s quick. All right, let’s talk energy consumption. The battery on board is a 34 kWh battery, which is really big for a hybrid. Most electric vehicles have got much bigger batteries, like 50, 60, 70, 100, but for a hybrid, 34 kwatt hours is is really big. And that’s where the the super hybrid business comes in. That battery will get you a range of about 170 km just on electric vehicle driving alone. I’ve got a little button down here. It says EV. When I click on that, like that, I am now just driving in electric vehicle mode. It will just use the motors and the battery to power the car. But for the most part, I’ve been driving in HV, which is hybrid electric vehicle. and that toggles between the battery, the motors, and the engine. Now, Cherry boasts that the range of the Tig 9 Super Hybrid, the total range is 1,250 km, which sounds amazing, but it’s probably not that far because that’s measured under the NEC criteria. The new criteria is the WLP. NE DC is the old way that they used to do it. WLPT is more realworld and more accurate and more transparent. So 1,250 km on a full charge and a full tank. That might be a bit ambitious. It would be good to test it, but we can’t test it today. And that also goes for the 170 km of electric driving range, too. It’s also NEC. So it might not be that much in terms of WLPT real world that is now in terms of fuel consumption cuz don’t forget this has a petrol engine as well. So it does use petrol but not much. Looking at our trip computer here, we have used in the last 50 km 1.4 L per 100 km. And that’s been mainly urban driving. So 1.4 which is exactly what the manufacturer claims you should get. The manufacturer’s official claim for your combined fuel consumption is 1.4 L per 100 km. So we are bang on what they say you should get. But there is a catch and the catch is if you want to get fuel economy like that all the time then you need to plug the car in regularly to charge the battery. Because if you let the battery run out of charge completely, then your driving is in the petrol engine only and you’re lugging around a big heavy battery and your fuel economy is going to skyrocket. So yes, if you want to get 1.4 L per 100 km like I’m getting, you’ve got to charge that battery. And that raises a whole lot of questions in terms of you’re buying a hybrid vehicle because it’s more convenient than electric vehicle in Australia where we don’t have the charging infrastructure, but you’ve still got to charge it at a charging station. Honestly, a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, unless you’ve got a wall unit at home, means you’re basically having to fill it up twice. So, you’re going to have to take it to a petrol station and then you’re going to have to take it to a charging station. And in Australia, there aren’t that many still. And so, you’re going to be fighting over charging stations to charge up your car. And you’re probably going to have to charge this up. I’d say once a week. At the moment, I’ve done about 100 km and I’m already at 42% charge in the battery. Okay. So maybe once a week, once a fortnight, depending on how you drive it and how often you drive it and how far you drive it. But yes, you’re going to have to be charging it regularly to get that fuel economy. You got to think about that. A regular hybrid, like a parallel series parallel hybrid, means you don’t have to plug it in to charge it. That might be a better option for you. Okay, we really should talk about what it’s like to drive. We’ve spoken about the motors and the engine. We’ve spoken about the fuel economy and the energy efficiency, but what is it like to drive? It’s really good. It, as I said before, it is a lot like driving an electric vehicle. It’s under most conditions, it’s a, you know, it’s electric only. So, it’s smooth and it’s quiet. And even the transition from motor to engine is so seamless. I There aren’t many hybrids where it’s this seamless. Most of them you can feel like a bit of a clunk as you as you go from one to the other. But this is just it’s smooth as butter cream. Something that’s smooth. It’s very smooth. The steering is also smooth and light and accurate. I like it a lot. And of course that power delivery is brilliant. and and just the way the gear shifter is positioned on the on the steering column, it just means that when you want to go into reverse, you just push it up. You want to go into drive, you pull it down, and to park, you you pop the button on the end. So, it’s a really easy, effortless SUV to drive. Yes, it is quite large, but these gigantic windows at the back here, I mean, visibility is excellent really. And the cameras that they’ve got on board here are oh my god they are crystal clear. They’re beautiful. Beautiful cameras. Um you can see better than out of your own eyes. Okay, let’s talk about safety. The Tig 9 Super Hybrid has got every piece of safety tech you could imagine. It’s got AE. It’s got rear cross traffic alert. It’s got front cross traffic alert both with braking. It’s got lane keeping assistance, blind spot warning. It’s It’s so super safe. You can’t even You can’t even drive it without putting your seat belt on. I I was in my own driveway and the back of it was sticking out a little bit past my fence and I jumped back into the car just to move it forward and it wouldn’t let me drive it because my seat belt wasn’t on. So, I had to put it on. That’s a little bit It’s a little bit annoying. There’s also some other little bit annoying safety tech too, like the alert systems. The lane keeping can be a little bit intrusive and the other alert systems can be a bit annoying, too. But you can turn them off and I do as soon as I get in. Now, when it comes to ownership costs, Cherry covers the TIG9 Super Hybrid with a 7-year unlimited autom warranty, 7 years roadside assistance, 7 years cap price servicing, and the battery, the 34 kWh battery is covered by an 8year unlimited kilometer warranty as well. And that’s that’s really good. So, yes, if there’s any downsides to the driving, I would say that there’s that slight delay under acceleration. And it’s that hybrid system sort of determining whether to go electric or whether to go engine. So there’s a slight pause sometimes. But also the brake pedal does have a bit of a odd feeling to it as well. And that’s a very hybrid thing. A lot of hybrid vehicles have got wooden feeling. We call it wooden feeling brake pedals. And sometimes the braking response isn’t as great as say a combustion engine vehicle. Now I’ve been driving a combustion engine vehicle all week. I jumped in this the other day. I had to stop suddenly in the traffic on the motorway. The cars had been in a traffic jam and I had to stop suddenly. I felt that I had to apply quite a lot of pressure to that brake pedal to pull us up. Now, it’s totally safe. You will get used to it, but that’s just a characteristic sometimes of hybrids, that braking response and also the the brake pedal feel. I’ve also got to say the ride comfort of the Tigo 9 Super Hybrid is excellent. We live in Sydney. The roads are terrible and it has handled the worst of Sydney’s roads. So, the suspension is is excellent. In fact, for the price point, it’s ridiculously good. And even over the worst roads like the one that we’re on now, the ride comfort is excellent. And that just adds to the whole smooth, effortless, luxurious experience of driving this car. Luxury technology. I found out what it means, but I had to ask Terry Australia, right? Because I looked everywhere and I couldn’t find the definition of what luxury technology means. So, according to Cherry Australia, luxury technology refers to the Tigo 9 being at the top of the Tigo range, the ultimate SUV in Cher’s lineup, the flagship. So, that’s what luxury technology means. All right, you need a verdict. Cherry Tigo 9 Super Hybrid. Incredibly good value. incredibly goodlooking, incredibly fuel efficient, but you’ve got to plug it in. Is Australia ready for a hybrid that you’ve also got to plug in? Look, charging infrastructure is getting even better. But, you know, I want a hybrid, which you don’t have to plug in that just recharges automatically. But if you get a wall unit at home, you can plug it in and you’ll be fine. Of course, if you do do that, you will get ridiculously good fuel efficiency. Now, of course, if you want to read my full review, go to carsguide.com.au. [Music] [Music]
CarsGuide’s Laura Berry takes a close look at the 2026 Chery Tiggo 9, the brand’s new large SUV flagship. This review covers the full Australian line-up, from entry-level variants to the top-spec models, with details on pricing, design and key equipment across the range.
Inside, the Tiggo 9’s cabin layout, materials and technology are examined in depth, along with second and third-row space, boot capacity and overall practicality for family buyers. The review also highlights key comfort and safety features, including Chery’s latest driver-assist systems.
On the road, Laura tests the Tiggo 9’s turbocharged powertrain and ride quality in urban and highway conditions, assessing performance, handling and refinement. The review also compares it against large SUV rivals like the Mazda CX-8, Hyundai Santa Fe and Kia Sorento, with a focus on value and what the Tiggo 9 brings to Australian buyers in 2026.
#Chery #Tiggo9 #Review
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Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
00:41 Design
02:08 Pricing and features
02:53 Practicality
04:16 Driving
05:06 Under the bonnet
06:29 Efficiency
10:38 Driving continued
12:11 Safety
13:09 Ownership
13:30 Driving continued
14:58 Verdict
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Read Laura’s full review: https://bit.ly/44bn06g
Check out our Chery Tiggo 9 hub: https://bit.ly/4rGctdn
Find more SUVs: https://bit.ly/3QVs1X1
Visit our EVGuide: https://bit.ly/3UHO9GT
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