This Chinese plug-in hybrid makes diesel SUVs look old-fashioned

Ask most people what they’d choose for a mega road-trip and the answer probably isn’t a plug-in hybrid. A low-range EV would sit right at the bottom of the list, a normal hybrid might do slightly better, but for years the default answer has been obvious: something big, comfortable and diesel-powered.

But fewer and fewer diesel cars are being made and sold now – and as our recent analysis showed, the rising price of fuel means the running costs just don’t sell it any more. So what’s replacing it?

Well, plug-in hybrid power is one option. I’ve done a mega road-trip in this Chery Tiggo 9, the bigger brother to our 2026 Car of the Year, and was really surprised at how good the new wave of plug-in hybrid cars actually are at doing long distances. The headline figure isn’t the 400hp power output – it’s that we covered more than 700 miles on one tank of fuel and one full battery.

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Now this wasn’t always the case. I once ran a Mazda CX-60 plug-in hybrid for six months. When the battery was fully charged, you had about 25 miles of EV range – and then when it was discharged, you were left with a big, heavy, petrol-powered SUV. It would do about 30mpg – and because the fuel tank’s capacity had to be reduced to make room for the batteries, a full tank and a full charge would only get you around 300 miles total.

The Tiggo 9 is different. Its battery is huge, for a start – bigger than some full EVs – and so you get more than 80 miles of range on a full charge. But the clever thing is that it always keeps some battery in reserve, and for much of the time, the engine can act more like a generator than a conventional engine – though the system can also send power directly to the wheels when that’s more efficient.

This is a really economical way to do things. The engine can charge the battery up at its own pace, using as little fuel as possible – and there’ll always be enough juice in the cells to account for climbing a hill, or a quick burst of acceleration, without having to rev like crazy.

My journey with the Tiggo 9 started in Kent, and encompassed three days and more than 700 miles – through Belgium, Germany, and a tiny bit of Switzerland before flying home from Basel. And we managed it all – motorway driving, some twisting country lanes, and a lot of traffic in crowded city centres – on one tank and one full charge.

That’s the equivalent of averaging 47mpg – not at all shabby for a car with more than 400hp, and even better than you’d get from a diesel model of this size. I recently had a diesel Volkswagen Tayron on test, and that averaged about 43mpg.

What are the Chery’s other credentials for long-distance driving? Well, it’s pretty comfortable – it floats over bumps on the motorway, and it’s very quiet unless you really hoof it. I also found the cruise control to work pretty smoothly, not always a given – especially in some other Chinese cars.

The Tiggo 9 is far from perfect, of course. The steering is disappointingly vague and it leans a lot in the bends, so you don’t really feel any hunger to use that ample power – it feels much nicer if you just take it easy.

The interior also feels disappointingly cheap in places, and the infotainment can be a pain to use. My biggest complaint is that the Tiggo 9 doesn’t feel like enough of a step up over the much cheaper Tiggo 8 – and we’ve seen even higher fuel economy from that car – just over 55mpg on a similar tank-to-tank trip.

Let both of them prove a point, though. If you choose the right one, a plug-in hybrid car can be an excellent long-distance cruiser – and you don’t necessarily need a diesel just because you do lots of long journeys.

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