Another month, another new Chinese car brand. Or so it seems. The latest is Chery, coming to the UK with the Omoda 5 EV early next year. Chery itself is enormous, making millions of cars for its home market since the late 90s and involved in a partnership to produce cars with Jaguar Land Rover. The 5 will be the first model it sells in the UK, Omoda itself a brand within the wider Chery group much as the
Funky Cat’s brand ORA is part of Great Wall Motors.
The Omoda 5 is a fully electric version of the Omoda C5, a family SUV that’s surprisingly cheap wherever it’s sold, and which is also coming to the UK at around the same time. The C5 should cost about £25,000, which means the EV will come in closer to £30,000 – making it one of the most cost-effective electric cars on the market. It’ll undercut almost everything battery powered of a similar size – stuff like the
Kia Niro EV, the
Hyundai Kona Electric and the
Skoda Enyaq. Only the
MG4 will match it for value… until Dacia gets in on the EV game, that is. Or something else from China.
• Spec not confirmed but twin panoramic 10-inch displays are standard fit
• 64kWh battery good for 280-mile maximum claimed range
• 204 horsepower electric motor means 7.8-second 0-62mph time
• Coming February 2024
• Pricing from around £30,000 (TBC)
• Two more electric SUVs coming by 2025, called 3 and 9
Design and models available
Omoda already seems partial to a proper bit of car ‘design language’, saying that the 5 is inspired by “the dynamic beauty of lighting cutting through the night sky in nature.” Make of that what you will, but in reality the stronger inspiration seems to come straight from other cars. The kink in the rear pillars has strong
Nissan Juke vibes, the thin LED headlamps have a striking Volvo feel, and more generally, the
Toyota C-HR springs to mind. It’s all very sharp though, right? Inside, a happy blend of Kia-style twin panoramic screens and a high-set, minimalist centre console make a for a ‘premium’ feeling cabin.
There are up to five trim levels starting at ‘Tech’ and rising to ‘Luxury S’ in markets where the C5 is already on sale. This will almost certainly be pared back to two or three for the 5’s UK launch.
Interior and technology
About the length of a
Nissan Qashqai, the Omoda is a five-seater but doesn’t seem quite as spacious as the average family SUV. In terms of practicality the boot is smaller than a Nissan Juke’s though still a perfectly user-friendly space.
Full specifications for the UK market aren’t confirmed yet, but we do know that the big screens will be standard – together making up a single 21-inch display – as well as wireless phone charging and Apple/Android connectivity. A whole suite of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) will come with a base model too, including lane keeping assist, adaptive cruise control and automatic emergency braking. Plenty of flashy convenience tech will be available with the 5, but how much of it will be reserved for upper trim levels remains to be seen. We’re talking stuff like dynamic indicators, 3D-effect matrix taillights, heated and ventilated front seats, dual-zone climate control and ‘atmospheric interior lighting.’ Top end cars will get the two-tone paint and contrasting coloured inserts for the wheels and side skirts.
Batteries and range
There’ll only be one drivetrain, initially at least, a 64kWh battery powering a 204 horsepower electric motor driving the front wheels. Omoda reckons the chassis has “excellent geometric cross-country ability”, which seems to mean “decent off-road”, but you can safely assume that this isn’t a Land Rover alternative. Omoda may come up with a ‘long range’ and/or a more powerful version later, but for the time being the 280-mile quoted range is about on par with what Hyundai quotes for the 64kWh Kona Electric.
Omoda hasn’t confirmed the maximum charging speed of the battery but has said it can be charged from 0-80 per cent in 40 minutes, and that it’s ‘vehicle-to-load’ capable. That means the car can provide charge to something else and could come with an interior three-pin socket, a feature also seen on other EVs like the Hyundai Ioniq 5/6 and the Kia EV6.
Price and release
The exact order of when the various versions of the 5 will land (electric, petrol and possibly a plug-in hybrid) isn’t quite clear, but Omoda says the EV will “arrive in the first quarter of next year”. That means we’re likely to see the first cars on the road by the middle of 2024. We expect a £25,000 base price for the petrol C5 and around £30,000 for the 5 EV, probably rising to £38,000 for a top-of-the-range model.
What other cars from Omoda are due?
The Omoda brand will launch with the C5 and the 5 EV, later releasing two new SUVs at either side. There’ll be a compact SUV called ‘3’ and a larger, more luxurious ‘9’ that could come with seven seats and be a
Kia EV9 rival. It’s highly likely that both of those will be electric-only, which is a good job because Citroen might have something to say about an Omoda C3. Both the 3 and 9 are unlikely to appear until 2025.
What other upcoming cars will this compete with?
Omoda among a number of
Chinese brands planning to launch in the UK over the next year or two, including Nio, HiPhi and XPeng. Nio will soon release the ES6 SUV, albeit it’s a little bigger and more costly than the Omoda 5, while HiPhi will give us an SUV called the Y (great name when you say it out loud) in a couple of years’ time. That, though, is more a Tesla competitor than a cheap electric runabout – it has top-hinged ‘gullwing’ rear doors. The
BYD Atto 3 is probably the closest rival to the Omoda 5 coming up, and Ora is planning to bring a small crossover called the Cherry Cat to the UK at some point soon too.
