Coming Soon: Omoda 5 and E5 - specs, price and release info

How to stand out in a market seemingly saturated with various flavours of mid-size SUVs and crossovers from both established brands and the growing number of new ones arriving from China? Omoda is among of the latter, the petrol-engined 5 and its electric E5 equivalent hitting UK roads with a strong offer of value and tech. Which is probably more relevant to most buyers than the well-meaning attempt to forge a community of ‘Omoders’ around shared values of sustainability and youthful creativity, though we’ll credit the effort to try something different as Omoda builds its profile here.
• Range launches with petrol 5 and electric E5 versions of Omoda’s mid-size SUV • Simple product range built around Comfort and Noble trim levels for both, with an all-inclusive spec and only real option being paint or bigger wheels on the petrol • Pricing is competitive, the petrol 5 starting at £25,235 and E5 from £33,055 both with a standard seven-year warranty • Electric version promises 204 horsepower, a 257-mile range by official WLTP test figures and strong real-world performance • Noble trim adds £1,800 to price of the petrol and £1,500 to that of the electric, throwing in extras like a 360-degree camera and Sony speaker system

For all the flowery language around the 5’s design the Omoda follows the established template for mid-size crossovers of this type, with a tall-riding stance and sculpted bodywork reminiscent of competitors like the Kia Niro EV, Hyundai Kona Electric, Toyota C-HR and various others. How to tell the electric E5 apart from its petrol equivalent? See the front end, which on the regular 5 pictured here has a prominent mesh grille where the electric one has a smoother looking ‘face’ with what appears to be a centrally mounted charging hatch. Slender lights give it a stylish look, the optional two-tone paint scheme with a contrasting roof an additional cost helping your Omoda stand out from the crowd. To that end silver paint is standard, with additional metallic shades another £500 and the two-tone £1,500 extra while the smaller wheels on the petrol model can be upgraded to 19-inch ones like those on the E5 if you so choose. Or at least can be if you go for the higher Noble trim level.

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. Since we last looked at the 5 Omoda has confirmed more about the interior, which is built around paired 12.25-inch screens sweeping across from the driver’s instrument display to a central one for infotainment as per the modern style. A full five-star score from safety body Euro NCAP has been confirmed thanks to an extensive range of driver aids, including the usual stuff of automatic emergency braking, lane-keeping and traffic sign recognition. Impressively, the genuinely useful features many rivals make you pay extra for like blind-spot detection and alerts for traffic crossing behind you when reversing out of a driveway or parking space are also standard. Bravo for that. Also standard is a reversing camera, upgraded to a full 360-degree system on the Noble trim along with nice-to-haves like a Sony speaker system.

Omoda is hedging its bets here and you’ll be able to have your 5 with a 1.6-litre petrol engine or full electric power as your tastes and budget allow. Both have comparable on-road performance, with sprightly 0-62mph times of seven and a bit seconds or so. Not as fast as some rivals but not so long ago that would be performance worthy of a hot hatch rather than a family crossover. The petrol has an automatic gearbox as standard while the electric E5 has a competitive 204 horsepower and 257-mile official range from a 61kWh battery. That middling capacity means the relatively slow 80kW charging speed on public chargers will be less of an issue than it might otherwise seem. All in all the Omoda 5 is on the money for performance against rivals, though there are faster options like the MG4 XPower available at this money if chasing Teslas is higher up your priorities.

The UK customer website and configurator are live now, so you can ‘build’ your Omoda 5 and compare features and costs already. A starting price of £25,235 for the petrol and £33,055 look good given the kit but a new generation of more affordable electric crossovers from more familiar brands like Vauxhall, VW, Citroën and others hitting the market at £25,000 or less mean Omoda will need to lean hard on benefits like generous standard kit and the seven-year warranty to win new buyers over.

Last we checked Omoda seems to be readying 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.

Omoda is one of a growing number of Chinese brands hitting the UK, including Nio, HiPhi and XPeng among them. 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 already in the market, though the (also Chinese built) Smart #1 is another strong competitor.