As of this year, the Chery Omoda E5 starts from $36,990. Photo: James Coleman.
Just over a decade ago, Chery was making cars that crumpled like a linen shirt in crashes. And if that didn’t kill you, the asbestos in the exhaust gaskets might.
Getting into today’s Chery Omoda E5, the difference couldn’t be more stark.
At least in my top-of-the-line EX spec, it is a properly premium car. There are gleaming glossy wood-look panels with deep lustre. Door-mounted speakers that could be out of a Mercedes. Supple leather sports seats. And – try as I might to find an errant mould line or nasty panel gap – fit and finish are excellent.
It looks a little weirdly high in the rear, but it’s very sharp on the outside, too. Enough that whenever I pulled up at intersections or the shopping centre car park, passers-by would give it long, admiring looks.
Perhaps they were also asking in their heads what on earth an ‘Omoda’ is.
Chery now also offers a range of very popular Tiggo SUVs, but after its false start in 2011, the Omoda was how it returned to Australia in 2023. There were three versions – the standard Omoda 5, the sporty Omoda 5 GT, and the fully electric Omoda E5 I’ve got on test.
They’re all now in run-out, however, because of what’s happening later this year, when Chery will launch two new sub-brands – Omoda and Jaecoo.
But this is where it gets confusing, because despite the fact there isn’t a single Chery badge anywhere on my Omoda, this model won’t become the first standalone Omoda. It will become the ‘Chery E5’.
So, yes, get in now if you want it with the Omoda badging. To make it even more attractive, Chery will give you a $6000 “bonus” on it this year, which drops the starting price from $42,990 to $36,990.
This makes the Omoda E5 the cheapest electric SUV on sale in Australia.
As with every Chinese car I’ve driven up to this point, the safety tech is not very finely tuned. Two other new brands, Deepal and Leapmotor, have promised over-the-air software updates for their cars soon based on irate feedback from both journalists and customers on all the beeping and blaring.
The Chery isn’t that bad, but it’s not perfect, either.
Whenever I had my sunglasses on, for example, the driver-monitoring system would flash up a message saying “You have been distracted” and a minute later, “You have been distracted for a long time!”
Hard to fault the interior. Photo: James Coleman.
One time, it got its knickers so tightly wound it started something called “invigoration mode”, which – as far as I could tell – dropped the AC down to 16 degrees. Once it deemed me sufficiently “invigorated”, it then turned itself off.
It took me several days to discover another tech anomaly – the fact that the on/off button by your left knee is only for the screen. It feels wrong to start with, but you simply get out of the Omoda and lock it. Your bottom is the on/off button (a ‘buttom’™).
For some reason, indicator volume is also a thing now. Driving along at 20 km/h, you can hardly hear the ticking, so you turn it up using the touch buttons on the right-hand side of the speedometer until you get to 110 km/h and realise your mistake because it’s now blaring like the clock in Stranger Things.
I never worked out how to adjust the regenerative braking either, so it was set to level one for the entire week, which is a bit annoying when you want to cruise along at 80 km/h, and it keeps biting as soon as you lift your foot slightly.
On the highway from Sydney to Canberra, I did get to level three, but that was only because my range had plummeted and the car automatically engaged ‘Eco Plus’ mode.
True story: I stopped twice to charge on that journey – once in Pheasant’s Nest for a top-up and again in Gungahlin in the ACT when things were so dire there was no way I would get to Tuggeranong without a tow truck. All up, it cost me about $60 – or a good deal more than it would have cost me in a petrol car.
Fortunately, the Omoda is delightful as an around-town car.
It bounds along quietly and comfortably on its suspension. The turning circle is brilliant, and you might think the sloping roofline and high window line would utterly devour visibility, but there’s a high-resolution 360-degree camera, so parking is a breeze, too.
Only when you try to perform deft manoeuvres through roundabouts do things get a bit sloppy. The steering doesn’t exactly do a stellar job of telling you where the front wheels are pointed, for instance, and Sport mode didn’t really help either. An MG 4 does a better job here.
But then you remember the price, which genuinely makes the Omoda hard to beat. Or Chery. Or whatever it is.
Would you buy a Chery? Photo: James Coleman.
2025 Chery Omoda E5 EX
- $42,000 (driveway, ACT)
- Electric motor, 61.1 kWh lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery, 150 kW / 340 Nm
- Automatic, front-wheel drive (FWD)
- 0-100 km/h in 7.6 seconds
- 430 km claimed range
- 1776 kg
- 5-star ANCAP safety rating
Thanks to Chery Australia for providing this car for testing. Region has no commercial arrangement with Chery Australia.
