Chery Tiggo 8 review

While no one knows when the adage ‘you get what you pay for’ was first coined, its meaning has still rang true ever since ancient times. The new Chery Tiggo 8 plans to challenge its meaning, though, aiming to give you more practicality and equipment than rivals but for lots less. 

Now, you’d be forgiven for never hearing of the brand Chery, but it’s the latest Chinese maker to join the UK market. Even so, it isn’t new to making cars, wearing the title of China’s second oldest car maker and the owner of Jaecoo and Omoda, two other brands that recently joined the UK market.

Launched alongside the smaller Chery Tiggo 7, the Tiggo 8 is a seven-seater that sets its sights on undercutting the KGM Rexton, Kia Sorento, Peugeot 5008 and Skoda Kodiaq. Not an easy task but, on paper at least, things look pretty promising. 

But what about in the real world? Does the Chery Tiggo 8 make a good case against the best seven-seaters? Read on to find out.  

What’s new

- September 2025: First Tiggo 8 UK deliveries take place

- August 2025: Chery Tiggo 8 on sale in the UK with seven-year/100,000-mile warranty. Five seats, 145bhp 1.6-litre petrol or plug-in hybrid (with 18.4kWh battery). Aspire or Summit trims

- July 2025: Chery Tiggo 8 makes UK debut at Goodwood Festival of Speed

You can have your Chery Tiggo 8 with one of two power options, the cheapest of which is a 1.5-litre pure petrol engine. We’re yet to try it in the Tiggo 8 but have tried it in the smaller Tiggo 7, where we found its 145bhp modest but enough for everyday driving. 

Your other option is the Super Hybrid plug-in hybrid (PHEV), which increases the power to 201bhp and reduces the 0-62mph sprint from 9.8sec to 8.5sec. That’s pretty much a match for PHEV versions of the Peugeot 5008 and Skoda Kodiaq. 

You get instant power when you put your foot down, thanks to the electric motor, making it easy to get off the line quickly or suddenly build speed if you need to overtake something. Our only real demerit is that, when you suddenly lift off in electric mode, there’s no brake regeneration and the car continues to surge forwards momentarily, which can be a bit disconcerting.  

When you aren’t accelerating hard, the Tiggo 8’s 18.4kWh battery can officially manage up to 56 miles on electricity alone, slightly further than the 5008 PHEV but not as far as the Kodiaq, which will manage over 70 miles (but is only available with five seats). 

Prioritising comfort means that the PHEV comes with quite soft suspension. Now, that’s a good thing when it comes to soaking up imperfections, something that the Tiggo 8 does better than the KGM Rexton and 5008. It isn’t such a good thing when it comes to body control, though, the Tiggo 8 moving around over undulations more than the 5008. 

As you might imagine, that also means the Tiggo 8 isn’t the best handling car out there. Indeed, through fast corners, the Tiggo 8 leans more than its rivals and is harder to place due to the light steering, which doesn’t give you much weight or feedback, even when you put it into its heaviest Sport mode. 

The brakes aren’t a strong point of the Tiggo 8, either, especially at slow speeds. You see, the response to all of your inputs is really sharp and makes start-stop traffic a bit of a challenge. True, things get slightly better as speeds increase, but it’ll still take you some time to get used to how gently you need to press them. Hopefully, that’s something that can be improved in a future software update. 

Things are better when it comes to refinement, with the PHEV proving all but silent when running on electricity alone. Once the petrol engine kicks in, there can be a fair amount of engine noise when you put your foot down, but that soon fades into the background when at a cruise. 

Meanwhile, standard-fit double-glazed windows help to ensure that wind and road noise are kept to a minimum. It’s certainly an improvement on the Dacia Jogger and only slightly louder than the 5008. 

“I really struggled to judge braking in start-stop traffic, with the slightest pressure on the pedal causing it to slow way more than expected.” – Oliver Young, reviewer

Given the Chery Tiggo 8’s price tag, you might expect its interior materials to be a bit low-rent. In reality, that isn’t the case, with almost all of the Tiggo 8’s surfaces being covered in soft touch materials. You’ll actually have to look quite hard to find hard and scratchy plastics, which is impressive even when compared with more expensive rivals. 

Build quality is also quite impressive, with everything feeling like it has been screwed together well and, what few buttons there are, giving a decent feel when pressed. 

Speaking of which, unlike the Chery Tiggo 7, the only physical buttons that you’ll find in the Tiggo 8 are for the windscreen demist, driving modes and a few controls on the steering wheel. As a result, you’ll have to make all of your air conditioning changes through the 15.6in touchscreen infotainment system, which is more distracting on the move than using the Kodiaq’s physical controls. 

You certainly can’t fault the high definition graphics that you’re fed on the touchscreen, and its massive size means that it’s easy to read all of the options that are on display. During our testing, we found that it could be a little slow to respond to our prods, though, while the many swiping shortcuts (swiping up brings up the air conditioning controls, for example) were often quite fiddly, especially when using Apple CarPlay and Android Auto at the same time.

Getting comfortable behind the wheel of the Tiggo 8 is easy, thanks to both trim levels coming with an electrically-adjustable driver’s seat as standard and plenty of steering wheel adjustment. Better still, the driving position lines you up perfectly with the steering wheel and pedals. 

You sit nice and high in the Tiggo 8, which many people will likely prefer to the Dacia Jogger MPV’s comparatively lower seating position. That helps when it comes to visibility too, giving you a good view out over the bonnet and out at junctions.

Rear visibility is also impressive, with large rear windows and big cut-outs in the chunky rear pillars, to improve the view over your shoulder. To help with parking, every Tiggo 8 comes with front and rear parking sensors and a rear-view camera, while top-spec Summit adds a surround-view camera. 

“To get around the lack of buttons, you can use speech recognition. The thing is, I found its responses hit and miss, often not understanding what I asked of it.” – Darren Moss, Deputy editor

We doubt anyone will struggle for space in the front of the Chery Tiggo 8, with even broad six-footers having lots of head, leg and shoulder room. 

You’ll have plenty of space for all of your gubbins in the front, thanks to the generous amount of storage spaces dotted around. True, the door bins aren’t the biggest, but they’ll take a large bottle of water, plus you also have two cupholders, space for two phones (one with wireless phone charging as standard), a cooled cubby within the armrest and large space beneath the centre console. 

Taking a seat in the rear, someone measuring six-feet tall will have no trouble with head room, but it’s leg room where the Tiggo 8 really impresses. Indeed, with the rear bench slid all the way back, there’s easily more knee room that you’ll find in the 5008. 

With three people sitting abreast, there’s enough shoulder room to get comfortable and, despite the middle seat being slightly raised, enough head room for taller people. There’s also barely any central transmission tunnel to straddle, meaning more foot space. 

Head room in the third row isn’t great and an adult will struggle to get comfortable without crouching slightly. Slide the second row marginally forwards and you can find a good leg room compromise for those in the boot and sitting in the middle row, but the 5008 is still roomier in the rearmost seats. 

As mentioned, the Tiggo 8 comes with handy 60/40 sliding middle row seats, allowing you to decide whether you want to prioritise rear leg room or boot space. You can also split the rear seats in a 60/40 configuration and fold them flat, an improvement on the Dacia Jogger’s seats, which leave a big step up to the seat backs from the boot floor.

With all seven seats in place, the PHEV offers just 117 litres of space, which is a fair bit less than the 5008 – but it’s worth noting a lot of that space is under the floor and rear seats. In five seat configuration, the Tiggo 8 PHEV’s 494 litre boot is smaller than the Jogger and 5008, largely because its underfloor storage area is filled with the hybrid system. 

“While some rivals might have more versatile 40/20/40 split folding rear seats, I found it useful that even the Tiggo 8’s front passenger seat can be folded flat, making carrying really long loads possible.” – Doug Revolta, Head of video

Buying the Chery Tiggo 8 outright will cost you significantly less than almost all of its rivals, including the KGM Rexton, Kia Sorento, Peugeot 5008 and Skoda Kodiaq. Indeed, the only seven-seater that’ll cost you less to buy is the slightly smaller Dacia Jogger MPV.

Going for the Super Hybrid plug-in hybrid (PHEV) will cost you slightly more but still way less than all of the Tiggo 8’s rivals, making it a good option for private buyers. Of course, that version will also be the one to go for if you’re a company car driver, with the low all-electric range and low CO2 emissions keeping benefit-in-kind (BIK) payments down.

If you can live without the petrol engine, it’s worth noting that the all-electric Peugeot e-5008 will cost you even less per month, despite its much bigger price tag. 

While we’re on the topic of efficiency, the pure petrol Tiggo 8 promises up to 36mpg. That’s some way behind the 5008 and Kodiaq, which both manage north of 44mpg. The Tiggo 8 should be better, managing up to 47mpg when its electric battery is dead. 

That figure will be even better providing you keep the battery charged up, something that’ll take 20 minutes (20-80%) when you plug into a fast charger. By comparison, the 5008 PHEV can’t fast charge and only accepts up to 3.7kW, as a result taking 5hr 30mins to go from 0-100%. 

Both Chery as a brand and the Tiggo 8 as a model are too new to have featured in the 2024 What Car? Reliability Survey. It does, however, come with a seven-year/100,000-mile standard warranty and a separate eight-year warranty for its electric battery. 

When it comes to safety, the experts at EuroNCAP awarded the Tiggo 8 four stars out of five. That’s a match for the 5008 on stars and, when you dig into the results further, the Tiggo 8 was slightly superior at protecting adults sitting in the front. The Peugeot was a fair bit better when it came to protecting children sitting in the rear, though. 

Even so, while it’s hard to directly compare to the Jogger’s 2021 score, the Tiggo 8 did vastly better than that rival’s one star rating, even under the more stringent 2025 tests. 

You get lots of standard safety equipment on the Tiggo 8, including automatic emergency braking (AEB), lane departure prevention, rear cross traffic alert, blind spot detection and 10 airbags that stay inflated for six seconds, in case of additional collisions. 

“Considering the amount that the Tiggo 8 manages to undercut almost all of its rivals by, I find the sheer amount of standard equipment really impressive.” – Will Nightingale, Reviews editor

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