Brand New JAECOO 7

Premium Chinese brand Jaecoo enters the mid-sized SUV segment with this car, the Jaecoo 7. Jonathan Crouch drives it.

Ten Second Review

The Chinese Chery motor group's premium brand Jaecoo brings us this mid-sized SUV, the Jaecoo 7. It's a striking thing and no one else in your street will have one. But should you take a risk with unknown brand? You might be tempted...

Background

You may already have lost track of the new Chinese brands entering our market. Here's another, Jaecoo. It's the premium brand of China's biggest car exporter Chery, a conglomerate that sold nearly 2.6 million cars in 2024 alone (more than the entire BMW Group managed) and has already launched a more mainstream marque - Omoda - into our market. Chery has had a joint venture with Jaguar Land Rover since 2012 and drew on that expertise for the first premium model it launched here - the Jaecoo 7. It's an aggressively-styled mid-sized SUV running on a stretched version of the chassis of the first Omoda model to launch in our market, the Omoda 5. And it costs about the same as slightly smaller Qashqai-class family SUVs, whilst offering more equipment and a bit more pavement presence. Sounds quite promising.

Driving Experience

The Jaecoo 7 we drove had a turbocharged 1.6-litre four cylinder petrol engine driving the front wheels mated to a 7-speed auto gearbox. There's 147PS available with 275Nm of torque, which provides for leisurely acceleration, 62mph reached in around 8 seconds. Jaecoo also offers a 4WD variant with this standard engine. If you're happy with front wheel drive, you'll be offered a 204PS Plug-in Hybrid model with an 18.3kWh battery giving a target EV range of 56 miles. All variants use that dual clutch DCT auto transmission we mentioned, which shifts smoothly and can kick down quickly when rapid acceleration is needed; the engine loses its smooth, refined demeanour when this is called for though. At the wheel, you sit quite high and commandingly - certainly compared with the premium mid-sized SUV rivals Jaecoo wants to compete with. Sight lines are great across the flat square bonnet, making narrow lanes or in-town manoeuvring simple. We'd have preferred a little more weight in the steering, but it's accurate and makes the car easy to place through fast bends - where you'll notice a little more body roll than is evident with obvious rivals. There's quite a firm ride, so you'll notice suburban potholes and speed humps, but it's nothing you couldn't live with. Light off road work is aided by 200mm of ground clearance and a 600m wading depth. The four-wheel drive version features seven driving modes, including Sand, Mud, Snow and Off-Road settings. The approach and departure angles are rated at 21 and 29 degrees respectively, with a maximum breakover angle of 200mm. A Bosch-developed Integrated Power Brake (IPB) system on four-wheel drive models simulates a differential lock with enhanced and faster locking capability. The system can respond in less than 0.1 seconds, providing the fastest 4WD response times when compared to its peers.

Design and Build

Even if you didn't know about Jaecoo parent company Chery's close ties with Jaguar Land Rover, you might guess at that collaboration from a profile or rear perspective of this Jaecoo 7. There are definite hints of Evoque side-on. But with a slightly squarer vibe that fits with the 'Rock in River' design ethos that apparently inspired the look of this car. Electric hidden door handles feature. And it's bigger than an Evoque - and similarly-sized lower-mid-sized SUVs like Nissan's Qashqai and MINI's Countryman; think more Kia Sportage or Hyundai Tucson in terms of overall size, but with bigger 19-inch wheels. The blocky, imposing 'waterfall grille' front end though, with its enormous vertically-slatted grille, is nothing like anything else in the segment. You might not be quite as taken with the cabin, with its curiously-shaped wheel and 'aircraft-style' gear shifter. Still, plenty of effort's gone in here with the 'Beyond Classic' design theme to try and meet premium aspirations. There's a tall centre console and a huge portrait-format central touchscreen powered by a snapdragon processor. Depending on trim choice, it'll be either 13.2-inches or 14.8-inches in size. There is of course a digital instrument screen too (10.25-inches in size), though it throws rather too much information at you with small fonts that are difficult to read at a glance. Attention to detail is otherwise impressive, with faux leather upholstery for the multi-mode 'All-Sense' seats. Plus there are subtle patterns on the trim elements and Defender-like rivets in the door handles. Thanks to the boxy shape and generous exterior dimensions (including quite a lengthy 2,672mm wheelbase length), rear seat space and headroom will be a particular selling point - even for six-footers, though the bench doesn't slide. That rear seat room seems to have compromised boot space a bit, rated at 412-litres - well behind what you get from smaller rivals.

Market and Model

Jaecoo feels confident enough not to massively undercut rivals on price. Not mainstream rivals anyway. The 1.6-litre four-cylinder 2WD model we tried costs from just under £30,000. You'll need a bit more (around £33,000) for the 4WD model. For the front-driven PHEV version, it's around £35,000. Those kinds of figures are not that much different to what you'd pay for a mainstream-branded mid-sized SUV of this sort. And it's also similar to the sort of money that premium makers will want for smaller compact SUVs with posh badges - though the Jaecoo 7 gives you a lot more space than one of those. It's exceptionally well equipped. All variants get 19-inch alloy wheels, full-LED headlights and a full-length 1.1m2 panoramic glass sunroof, as well as a powered tailgate, keyless entry, a driving mode system, adaptive cruise control and a 540-degree camera parking system with an 'invisible bonnet' feature. Inside, there's faux leather upholstery, powered heated front seats, a cooled 50W wireless 'phone charger, a multi-colour ambient lighting system and a 10.25-inch LCD Instrument Cluster. Plus there are up to 21 advanced driver assist systems. All of this comes fitted to the base-spec variant, which bears the spec name 'Deluxe', a trim designation we've rarely seen since the Seventies. If you want 4WD or a PHEV drivetrain with your Jaecoo 7, then you'll have to have it with a plusher 'Luxury' level of spec. With that, the 13.2-inch central infotainment screen of the 'Deluxe' version gets replaced by a larger 14.8-inch monitor incorporating an 8-speaker Sony sound system. At 'Luxury' level, Jaecoo also throws in a head-up display, a heated steering wheel, heated rear seats and ventilated front seats with a 'Welcome' feature that retracts them to welcome driver when the door is opened.

Cost of Ownership

You shouldn't have particularly high expectations for efficiency when it comes to the 1.6-litre petrol Jaecoo 7 models. This four-cylinder engine is something of a stop gap (and will probably be eventually replaced by a Hybrid). Even driven exclusively in the car's most frugal 'Eco' mode, it manages very unremarkable figures; rated in front-driven form at 37.7mpg on the combined cycle and 169g/km CO2 for the 2WD model. As you'd expect, efficiency takes a dip if you go for the 4WD version - it's 35.3mpg and 182g/km with that model. All of which might encourage you to find the extra the brand wants for the PHEV version. With a 60-litre fuel tank, that Plug-in Hybrid has an EV range of 56 miles, which gives a combustion/EV combined range of 745 miles and a combined fuel economy figure of 403mpg, or 47mpg with the battery in a high depletion scenario. It delivers emissions of 23g/km of CO2. The Plug-in Hybrid model's CATL-made 18.3kWh battery can be DC fast-charged at up to 40kW, which allows it to charge from 30-80% in about 40 minutes. That's not particularly fast; for perspective, we'll tell you that a rival Volkswagen Tiguan eHybrid PHEV can charge its larger 19.7kWh battery from 5-80% in just 26 minutes. AC charging this Jaecoo from a typical 7.4kW home wallbox will take six hours 30 minutes. The PHEV model also offers Vehicle-to-Load capability so that external devices can be charged from the drive battery via a 3.3kW charging plug. Across the range, a seven-year / 100,000-mile manufacturer's warranty is standard (with no mileage limit for the first three years) and (rather impressively) roadside recovery comes included throughout the seven year period.

Summary

Customers will be attracted by this car's distinctive looks, its generous equipment levels and its spacious cabin. There's affordable pricing too, though much of the benefit of that is undone on this conventional petrol model by under-whelming engine efficiency. The drive dynamics too, aren't quite up to those of more established rival models. And you might also, like us, doubt that this car really is quite as 'premium' as Jaecoo thinks it is. Maybe it doesn't matter. If you like the look of this car, don't need pin-sharp handling and perhaps find yourself attracted by the SHS Plug-in Hybrid version, you'll probably find it to be refreshingly different. Which the Jaecoo 7 needs to be to stand out in such a crowded market.