Chery Super Hybrid technology will debut PHEV technology in Malaysia for the brand.
Chery Malaysia showed off their latest powertrain technology in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. The Chery Super Hybrid (CSH) system is the Chinese company’s proprietary plug-in hybrid technology. Like any good PHEV system, CSH consists of three primary powertrain elements – the petrol engine, the gearbox and the battery.
In the case of CSH, the petrol engine employed is a new generation 1.5L 4-cylinder motor with a very high thermal efficiency of 44.5% for naturally good fuel efficiency even before the hybrid element comes into play.
The dedicated hybrid transmission (DHT) used here incorporates two electric motors and 3 gears allowing for up to 4000Nm of wheel torque output.
Finally, we have the battery pack. In this case, it’s a lithium iron phosphate battery with 18.3kWh of energy capacity. The battery pack alone can return 90km of electric driving when fully charged. Combined with the petrol motor and a full tank and you can get 1,200km of driving range. There are apparently other versions of CSH that run larger capacity batteries with lithium ion chemistry but this is not planned for the first batch of PHEV models here.
Just like a typical electric vehicle, PHEVs can be charged with DC fast chargers, AC charging or a 3-point plug with compatible 3-phase wiring. Charging speed figures that were shared were as follows:
- 40kW DC Fast Charging recovers 30 – 80% in 19 minutes – perfect for a bathroom break and a coffee
- 6.6kW AC charing recovers 30 – 80% in 3 hours, perfect for shopping trips
- 3-point charging recovers 10-100% in 8.5 hours, perfect for overnight home charging
This is the strength of Chery’s PHEV system which will debut in Malaysia on two updated versions of familiar models – the Tiggo 7 and Tiggo 8. These were previewed at the same event. Though the final names for Malaysia have yet to be shared, at the event, these two models dropped the ‘Pro’ suffix for ‘PHEV CSH’. Both the Tiggo 7 PHEV CSH and Tiggo 8 PHEV CSH feature some updates over their petrol counterparts.
The Chery Tiggo 7 PHEV CSV will feature new headlamps, new rims, a new front grille and bumper, new taillights, tailgate, bumper and diffuser. This would essentially make it a facelift of the petrol model we got last year.
The Tiggo 8 PHEV CSH’s updates are more subtantial as they extend to the interior of the vehicle.
The exterior too gets a minor facelift in the form of new front headlamps, a new front grille, a new front bumper, new rims, new tailpipes and a new diffuser. It also gets hidden door handles, which is an atypical upgrade for a facelift.
Inside there’s a new 15.6″ infotainment unit and a new instrument panel. There are new materials for the seat and a new centre console, new steering buttons and a new gear selector stalk too.
That’s what we know so far. We’ll share more info on these PHEV models as it becomes available.
