If you’re familiar with Walt Disney’s adaptations of AA Milne’s children’s classic Winnie the Pooh, and you jolly well ought to be, then the name of this new import from China, the Tiggo, inevitably brings to mind Tigger, and Tigger’s song. I find myself singing along to it, but couldn’t remember all the lyrics, so I’ve looked them up, and this is how it goes:
The wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is Tiggers are wonderful things!
Their tops are made out of rubber
Their bottoms are made out of springs!
They're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy
Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!
But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers is
I’m the only one
Sadly, that description doesn’t really fit this seven-seater plug-in hybrid (PHEV) SUV as well as it does an over-energetic cartoon big cat, but that’s probably just as well, making allowance for road safety and car sickness.
I mean, this latest Chinese import with an odd name (to us, at any rate) is not even that bouncy, trouncey, ouncey, or pouncey, though that high stance suggests it should be.
The name, by the way, is pronounced more like Cherie than Cherry, and, if you’re interested in navigating your way through the plethora of Chinese brands, it’s the mainstream offering of the Chery Group. Jaecoo, the one everyone is comparing to a Range Rover, is the posher one, and Omoda is the fashionable, youthful one. There will be more.
It’s a fairly smooth piece of machinery, with a good degree of refinement at speed, though the ride did feel a bit jiggly at lower speeds on the rougher bits of the motorway system, which is a shame. Obviously, the roads in its home market are much better and the suspension will need a little more attention before it’s fully attuned to British carriageways.
THE SPEC
Chery Tiggo 8 Summit Plug-in Hybrid
Price: £31,545 (as tested, range starts at £28,545)
Engine capacity: 1.5l-petrol, 4-cyl + 18kWh battery, 1sp auto
Power output (PS): 204
Top speed (mph): 112
0 to 60 (seconds): 8.5
Fuel economy (mpg): 211 (when fully charged)
CO2 emissions (WLTP, g/km): 31 (when fully charged)
Did someone say potholes?
The only real drawback is its sheer size, making it, like other overblown SUVs, a bit of a drag in town. On the other hand, it will carry five adults and two kids, with plenty of flexibility from the sliding split-fold middle row of seats in juggling humans and their clobber.
It goes pretty well for a big unit, too (2.2 tonnes), which is down to a well-engineered combination of petrol and electric power, and, like so many modern hybrids that major on their electric-only credentials, has a large battery pack with commensurate electric-only range (50 miles in total is probably on the cards, if it’s not too cold)
As we all should know by now, you only get the very best out of any PHEV if you plug it in at home and use it mostly for moderate commuting and occasional longer drives.
Business users enjoy some attractive tax breaks, which may account, with the value-for-money proposition, for just how many of these Chinese SUVs we see around these days. Right or wrong, it’s been a much faster “invasion” than the Japanese brands in the 1970s and the South Korean models in the 1990s.
Looks-wise, it has the kind of generic styling that, from most angles, makes it virtually indistinguishable from its more established rivals such as the Skoda Kodiaq, Kia Sorento, and Peugeot 5008 seven-seaters, as well as, say, the five-seater VW Tayron, Hyundai Tucson or Volvo XC60.
Broadly, it’s as usable as they are, with comparable (so far as we can tell this early) reliability, build quality and materials, but is much cheaper. The main day-to-day downside is the emphasis on accessing controls via the touchscreen, which tends to be an issue with the Chinese brands (though hardly confined to them).
On the other hand, the Chery is cheaper than most, if not all, of its rivals. Efficient production or dumping into the UK, one of the few markets still relatively open to Chinese cars. A matter for the Competition and Markets Authority. For now, it may be safely stated that you get a lot of car for the money.
In my time with it, I didn’t find too much else to fault with the Tiggo. I didn’t especially like the wiper controls being a little wheel on the indicator stalk, and, as ever, you need to resort to the admittedly clear touchscreen to, for example, turn on the heated seats.
The only flaw in my experience was that the seatbelt warning would come on simply because I was driving with the rear seats lowered – no one in them or anything on them. The beeping eventually goes off, but it was a bit annoying.
Other than that, this is an interesting alternative to the other seven-seaters in the market. But the Tiggo is never going to be as much fun as a Tigger.
The 13 best electric cars in 2026
Is an EV worth it? All your questions answered in our expert buying guide
I’ve driven the Chery Tiggo 7 plug-in hybrid – here’s my honest review
New Cupra Born revealed with new styling, upgraded tech and up to 372 miles of range
Celebrity footballers set to arrive in Cherys for Soccer Aid
I’ve been driving this family hybrid SUV which targets fashion-conscious buyers
