Omoda Omoda 9 (2025 - ) review

If you want your money to literally take you a long way the Omoda 9 is off to a winning start with its combination of punchy pricing and that incredible operating radius of over 700 miles. For context against plug-in hybrid SUVs from names you will have heard of the cost is about the same as an absolutely top-spec Ford Kuga … or the most basic plug-in BMW X3 available. But in performance terms it leaves them both for dead, or at least does by the numbers for power, range and acceleration. More on that in due course but the combination of low CO2 and ability to go over 90 miles on electric power alone means it could save you a packet in Benefit In Kind if you’re running it as a company car, while private owners with somewhere to charge can effectively run it as an EV and never need visit a petrol station.

As a brand-new name Omoda realises it needs to win the trust of customers to encourage them to take a punt on it, which it does with the offer of a seven-year warranty. That should last you beyond any regular finance or lease term, meaning any issues that may arise will be taken care of while it's in your hands. An impressive network of shared dealerships with partner brand Jaecoo also means you shouldn’t have to go far if problems do occur.

In a recurring theme if we were to score this simply on the quantity and scope of the listed safety equipment and driver aids it would be an easy five out of five. But we also have to consider if they truly are aids, or in fact more of a liability. And we have some concerns. Some are just annoying, like the massive blindspots at the corner of the windscreen and the fact the speed readout on the huge digital instrument cluster is obscured behind your hand on the wheel. How basic stuff like the latter gets through sign-off raises questions about Omoda’s development rigour, truth be told. A suspicion not improved by the drunken manner in which the steering ‘assist’ lurches between the white lines when on cruise control, huffily taking its bat and ball home and turning itself off if you dare to put in even the lightest of corrective inputs. While you can turn off some of the more annoying bongs and chimes with a single swipe of the screen it still never shuts up entirely, the value of such warnings rendered useless for the fact you don’t know what they’re alerting you to.

The Omoda 9 is, it turns out, a very powerful car. But the prevailing character is of comfort and refinement, for the fact even with clever adjustable damping it still feels rather too soft and vague to make the most of it. Better to just chill out and enjoy plush seating with power adjustment, heating and ventilation for all, the way the ‘acoustic’ glass hides road and wind noise and the space to stretch out in the back. The boot is massive as well, and a long motorway trip with five people and all their luggage was absolutely no issue whatsoever. For all that there are still some literally rough edges in the way it’s been put together to remind you it’s not the BMW or Range Rover it thinks it is, along with annoying quirks like a thunk from the handles retracting into the doors loud enough to think you’ve hit something every time it happens.

We like Omoda’s boast of keeping plenty of physical switchgear, and the fact some effort has been made to neatly integrate the screens into the dashboard rather than bodge them to it with all the grace of a flatscreen telly screwed into a Travelodge bedroom wall as many rivals do. The multi-purposed and knurled rotary knobs under the screen are especially neat, though weirdly there isn’t one for volume and this is instead a stretch across to the opposite side of the screen. It’s a common criticism of Chinese-developed cars as well but the fashion for tiny fonts and fiddly interfaces makes no sense when there’s so much screen real estate to play with. It’s not all bad, though, and the single trim level is incredibly generous, the standard Sony sound system including speakers in the driver’s headrest that make phone calls positively creepy for the fact it sounds like the person you’re speaking to is inside your head! Beyond that there’s no criticism of the amount of kit, whether it be funky all-round cameras or the full panoramic sunroof.

Another case of looking beyond the numbers, as impressive as they doubtless are. While 449 horsepower isn’t that big a deal in an electric car it’s a lot for a plug-in hybrid, the combination of a 1.5-litre turbo petrol engine and two electric motors making for effortlessly smooth acceleration. Most of the time. While technically interesting the Omoda’s Super Hybrid System is also very complicated, to the point it can even muddle itself about which of the nine possible combinations of battery, motor and engine it needs for a given situation. More than once we ended up in a weird feedback loop of lurching on/off acceleration on a constant throttle that had passengers thwacking their heads into their seats and questioning our ability to drive. The rest of the time it worked very smoothly, though, and we’re still not sure what manner of witchcraft is being employed that it can do a round trip of over 500 miles and still be showing a quarter of a tank of fuel and half a battery still to go. Genuinely amazing.