2026 Chery Tiggo 9 Super Hybrid Ultimate AWD (car review)
By Google News Category Car Reviews ·
Most test vehicles leave without much of a fight. You hand back the keys, take a last look and get on with your life. The Chery Tiggo 9 Super Hybrid is a different story, because a week in it quietly rewires your expectations of what a $66,000 family SUV should be.
The question isn’t whether it’s perfect (it isn’t). It’s whether you can get into anything else afterwards without feeling slightly short-changed. For the record, the Tiggo 9 is sold in two trim levels.
Things kick off with an Elite front-wheel drive offering, as well as the fully loaded Ultimate all-wheel drive grade we’re testing. The latter is priced at $59,990 plus on-road costs. It’s powered by a 1.5-litre turbo petrol engine working with three electric motors.
That’s paired with a 34kWh battery, good for a combined 315kW. Chery claims up to 170km of electric running, and a 1.4-litre/100km combined figure. It seats seven, and it’s backed by a 7-year warranty with an 8-year cover on the high-voltage battery.
Numbers aside, let’s start with the thing this writer will miss most. The driver’s seat has a massage function, and once you’ve experienced it, it’s very difficult to live without. That’s mostly because it’s much more than the novelty you find in some cars.
Instead, it’s a proper massage that makes a long commute feel like a perk. Combined with heated and ventilated seating that works better than it needs to, the front row is the best place to be in this car by a comfortable margin.
The catch is that, the nice muscle manipulation is a driver-only party. Your passenger still gets the other good bits, but in practice it means one person in the car is having a lovely time and the other is making a mental note to bring it up later.
It’s an odd omission at this price, and the sort of thing a family buyer will notice by the time they get home from the dealership. On paper, 315kW is serious grunt for a seven-seater, and it’s there when the system decides to deliver it.
The trouble is that the Tiggo 9 never seems keen to go looking for it. The powertrain is tuned like a car that would rather be sipping electrons than answering your right foot, so the performance sits in reserve while the car goes about its efficient business.
You can get at it, but you have to ask firmly, and even then there’s a sense of the car weighing up whether you really mean it. That suits the way most owners will use it. For school runs and motorway cruising, calm and quiet is exactly right.
But if you buy this expecting the power figure to define the experience, you’ll find the car politely declining to play along. The cabin is dominated by a huge 15.6-inch display, and a large majority of functions have been moved into it.
Some of that is fine. A lot of it isn’t. Basic controls that deserve a physical button or a shortcut are buried a few menus deep, and the learning curve is steeper than it should be. The best example from my week was the exterior mirrors.
I spent a good ten minutes in a car park, jabbing through menus, trying to work out how to adjust them. It’s the kind of task that should take about two seconds and no thought, and it left me feeling like I was sitting an exam I hadn’t studied for.
Once you know where things live it gets easier, but the first few days are a lesson in why some drivers still prefer a dial or a switch. Then there’s the start button, or more accurately the lack of one.
You get in with the key on you, the car wakes up, and you drive away. For the first…
Originally published by Google News Category Car Reviews
