Chery Tiggo 4 Review & Prices

The Chery Tiggo 4 is the smallest model in the Chinese manufacturer’s UK lineup, sitting below the Tiggo 7, Tiggo 9 and Carwow’s Car of the Year, the Chery Tiggo 8. By some margin it’s the cheapest hybrid-powered SUV on sale in the UK - and in fact, it’s close to being the cheapest SUV or hybrid of any kind.

Seriously undercutting the MG ZS Hybrid+, Dacia Duster Hybrid and Renault Captur E-Tech means the Tiggo 4 is a bit like a DFS sofa - so much cheaper than the competition that you have to double check you’ve ordered the correct three-seater corner unit instead of just a footstool.

The Tiggo 4 looks a bit awkward next to its bigger siblings, as it’s just quite oddly proportioned. The front end looks like it’s been taken from the large Tiggo 7, but the rear is oddly truncated. The grille looks smart, though, as do the aerodynamic alloy wheels, and at the rear you’ll find quite cool-looking taillights in a full-width lightbar.

The interior is much more premium than you’d expect for the price. It looks a lot like Chery’s larger cars, but has a bank of physical buttons which makes it so much easier to use. There’s a strip of fabric across the dash and some wood-effect plastic trim. You don’t need to go far to find nasty, scratchy plastics, but that’s true of every one of this car’s alternatives - the Tiggo 4 still has the MG ZS and Dacia Duster licked when it comes to quality.

It’s also pretty spacious in the rear, with room for a six-foot adult in reasonable comfort. You won’t want to take half the basketball team on a European road trip but you wouldn’t in any of this car’s alternatives, either.

The Tiggo 4’s 430-litre boot is a good size for a car this small, though the 12V battery lives under the boot floor and means there’s a nasty hump in quite an awkward place which spoils its credentials for lugging larger, square items. It shouldn’t affect soft bags or the weekly shop much, though.

The Tiggo 4 comes exclusively with the oddly named Super Hybrid System - Hybrid, which comprises a 1.5-litre engine with an electric motor and battery. Like Chery’s larger hybrids, the engine isn’t very powerful, acting mostly as a generator while the motor drives the car. It operates pretty smoothly, and we found the engine was less noisy than in an MG ZS Hybrid+. It’s more sluggish than its 204hp power output would have you think, though.

On the road, the Tiggo 4 is just fine. It leans a lot in the bends and the steering is quite dead, but the same can be said of all the alternatives - even ones that cost a whole lot more. A similarly-priced MG3 is a bit tidier in the bends, but it’s a much smaller car.

Verdict

The Chery Tiggo 4 is quite stunningly cheap for a hybrid SUV with enough space for a family. This makes it quite easy to forgive most of its foibles, and most of them are pretty easy to live with anyway. Spending a bit more money will get you a car that’s nicer to drive and more efficient, but the Tiggo 4 really is unbeatable value.

You can check out our best deals on the Chery Tiggo 4 right here, or see Chery Tiggo 4 leasing deals. You can browse used Chery models for sale and remember that you can even sell your old car with Carwow when the time comes.

With a starting price of £19,995 The Tiggo 4 is only a few hundred pounds more than the MG3 Hybrid+, which is a small hatchback. It undercuts the MG ZS Hybrid+ by a couple of thousand pounds, and the Dacia Duster Hybrid by more than £5,000. This is one of the cheapest cars of any kind on sale, let alone hybrid-powered SUVs.

All versions come with LED lights all round, keyless entry and start, dual-zone climate control, a rear-view camera, wireless smartphone connectivity and a pair of 12.3-inch screens for driver information and infotainment. Upgrading to the ‘Summit’ model for £2,000 adds on artificial leather upholstery, tinted windows, an electric driver’s seat, heated seats and steering wheel, a wireless charging pad and a 360-degree camera.

The hybrid system operates reasonably well, but the Chery Tiggo 4 doesn’t impress in the corners

In town

The Chery Tiggo 4 uses the same SHS-H hybrid system as other products from the same manufacturer - the Omoda 5 and Jaecoo 5 particularly. That means that it’s primarily driven by the electric motors rather than the engine, so it’s quite smooth and responsive in town. There’s a little bit of a delay when you press the accelerator, but you can drive around that quite easily.

Visibility is good and you sit up high especially compared to the small hatchbacks you’d be buying for a similar price to the Tiggo 4. The controls are light and the suspension does an okay job over lumps and bumps in town, being more comfortable than an MG ZS.

On the motorway

Getting up to speed is a doddle thanks to the relatively powerful hybrid engine, and unlike a Toyota Yaris Cross or Dacia Duster putting your foot down doesn’t immediately send the engine revs spiralling - there’s enough reserved in the battery to cover events like that.

The engine quiets down nicely at speed but there’s noticeable wind and road noise, and though the Tiggo 4 has plenty of safety and driver assistance features we found them to be a bit overzealous especially when it comes to keeping you in your lane.

On a twisty road

Like the larger Omoda 5 and Jaecoo 5, the Chery Tiggo 4 focuses on comfort over sportiness and as a result it’s not very much fun from behind the wheel. The steering is overly light, but with a strange amount of resistance just off the centre, and the tall body leans quite a lot in the corners. Putting it into Sport mode doesn’t make it notably more dynamic, rather it just makes the engine run quite a lot more often.

Lots of room in the rear seats and a decent boot, but some annoying quirks

The Tiggo 4’s front seats are quite spacious despite the wide centre console. The driver’s seat can be adjusted electrically, but the passenger seat doesn’t adjust for height so you always feel quite perched. And neither seat has adjustable lumbar support, which is annoying.

Storage for small items is good. The door bins aren’t huge, but there’s a vast open space under the centre console, an under-armrest storage bin, decent glovebox and a couple of cupholders plus a spot to keep your phone - and wirelessly charge it on the Summit model.

Space in the back seats

Outright space in the Tiggo 4’s back seats is very good for a small SUV. Our 6’2 tester was able to sit behind his own driving position with reasonable comfort - there’s enough legroom and plenty of headroom thanks to the tall roofline.

The rear windows are large but the integrated headrests in the front seats mean your view forwards is a bit rubbish, so you feel a little hemmed in - a bit like when the person in front of you on a plane reclines their seat.

The flat floor means there’s somewhere for a centre passenger to put their feet, but the Tiggo 4 is still a small SUV so we wouldn’t recommend going three-abreast with any regularity. Better to have two passengers and enjoy the fold-down centre armrest, central air vents and USB charger.

Boot space

The Tiggo 4’s boot space is 430 litres, which is bigger than a VW T-Cross (385 litres), Toyota Yaris Cross (390 litres) or Renault Captur (326 litres), but it’s beaten by the MG ZS (443 litres). The Dacia Duster Hybrid matches it with 430 litres.

All of those cars have a totally flat floor, though - the Tiggo 4 does not. The 12V battery is positioned under the boot floor, and it’s too tall - so Chery’s had to build in an annoying little hump to accommodate it. It won’t be much of a problem when you’re loading soft bags or shopping, but could be very annoying if you’re trying to slide in something big, flat and heavy.

A remarkably posh-feeling interior for the price, but the infotainment system can be infuriating

The Tiggo 4’s interior certainly doesn’t look like one of the cheapest new cars in the UK. In fact it’s rather classy, with a seamless housing over the two display screens, some posh wood-effect trim and a fabric strip running across the dash.

You don’t need to press far to find where costs have been saved, of course - the wood-effect is hollow-feeling plastic - but it still feels much posher in here than a Dacia Duster Hybrid.

You control most of the car’s functions via touchscreen, but Chery has also fitted a climate control panel, which is nice. It means you can keep your sat-nav or useful info on the main screen and still change the temperature. It’s a flat, featuress plane with touch-sensitive controls, which means you do still need to take your eyes off the road - but it’s nice to have.

The main 12.3-inch infotainment screen is the same as you get in many other Chery products such as the Omoda 5 and Chery Tiggo 7. It’s full-featured, and runs things like wireless Android Auto very well indeed. But the interface is quite sluggish, and there are some functions - like getting the lower toolbar to display when you’re in the smartphone mirroring screen - which are a pain to get right.

The claimed fuel economy for the Tiggo 4 is 53.2mpg, which isn’t the best in this class but does somewhat reflect the additional power of the hybrid system versus the competition - 204hp is a lot in a small SUV. We saw around 48mpg during our testing.

But the less powerful (130hp and 155hp) Toyota Yaris Cross and Dacia Duster will both easily achieve over 60mpg in the real world, and even the 190hp MG ZS is a 55mpg car. In fact, the Tiggo 4’s fuel economy is more on a par with petrol-powered alternatives - a Volkswagen T-Cross will do 50mpg in the real world too. The Tiggo 4 will likely be more efficient than the VW on a trip through town due to the efficiency of the electric motors, though.

Regardless, don’t buy the Chery Tiggo 4 expecting drastically lower fuel bills than an equivalent combustion-powered car.

With CO2 emissions of 120g/km and no plug-in hybrid or fully electric version to cut costs, the Tiggo 4 won’t make a particularly great company car as benefit-in-kind tax will be quite high.

Euro NCAP rating: 4/5 (2025)

Adult occupant: 79%
Child occupant: 85%
Vulnerable road users: 78%
Safety assist: 80%

The Tiggo 4 scored a four-out-of-five verdict in Euro NCAP’s crash-testing. Don’t let the lack of a top score put you off, as the tests are becoming very hard for small cars to do well in - the Yaris Cross and MG ZS scored an identical four stars, and the Volkswagen T-Cross and Dacia Duster just three stars. If you want a small SUV with a five-star rating, the Omoda 5 carries one - albeit under less stringent 2022 testing procedures.

You get all the safety kit you’d expect and you can add easy shortcuts to the drop-down menu bar to turn them off. While this is more laborious than the Dacia Duster’s ‘My Safety Perso’ button or the MG Pilot Custom in the ZS, it’s still not too bad and means you can silence the annoying bongs at the start of every drive.

Chery hasn’t been in the UK for very long but it’s sold a lot of cars and amassed a large dealer network. It hasn’t yet featured in the Driver Power owner satisfaction survey, but anecdotal evidence is mixed so far, with customers encountering a fair few niggling issues. Chery is able to respond quickly to customer feedback, though, and issue over-the-air updates to address certain features. A long, seven-year warranty should provide some reassurance.