Launched in late February, the Jaecoo J7 PHEV is the best-selling plug-in hybrid in Malaysia, with nearly 900 units sold thanks to its attractive price of RM158,800. That’s an impressive figure, but Omoda & Jaecoo Malaysia knows that the buying public is still hesitant towards trusting the technology, which is why explaining it will be a key component of the upcoming Omoda & Jaecoo Carnival later this month. Ahead of the event, the company invited select members of the media – some of which, like yours truly, have already driven the car – to provide a deeper exploration of the Super Hybrid System (SHS) that powers the J7 PHEV. The Chery-owned marque took great pains to distance its technology from the usual PHEV systems found in the premium German and Swedish models that Malaysians are used to. By now, the drawbacks of traditional PHEVs are well known. Using an engine connected to an electric motor and a conventional multi-speed transmission in series, they provide good performance and fuel efficiency when fully charged, but when the electric power is exhausted they are saddled with little electric assistance and hundreds of kilograms of dead weight – so much so that they use even more fuel than a conventional purely combustion-engined car. Jaecoo J7 global product director Chen Hao summed it up best by reciting the Chinese colloquialism for PHEV performance – “a dragon with electricity, a worm without.” It’s this characteristic that the Middle Kingdom’s carmakers building the latest generation of PHEVs, including the J7 PHEV, are trying to avoid – especially given that PHEV owners are typically lax when it comes to charging. The building blocks of the SHS are familiar by now. There’s a 1.5 litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine, an electric motor and a dedicated hybrid transmission (DHT) combining the two power sources. But the way the SHS goes about its business is different from other PHEVs on the market. Let’s start with the engine, which contrary to what we’ve reported previously, is unique to the SHS platform and not shared with the Chery Omoda 5 – even the bore and stroke figures are significantly different. The mill runs on what Chery calls a “deep Miller cycle”, which is essentially the Atkinson cycle commonly used in hybrid vehicles but with the intake valve held open even longer. This enables the engine to force even more air back into the intake manifold, thus lowering the effective compression ratio and allowing it to run at higher compression without knocking – O&J claims a ratio of 14.5:1 – to increase efficiency. The result is a high thermal efficiency of 44.5% and outputs of 143 PS and 215 Nm of torque. We then move to the other components that are easy enough to understand – an electric drive motor producing 204 PS and 310 Nm of torque, plus a single-speed transmission (both combined in an 11-in-1 DHT package) and a 18.3 kWh BYD-produced lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery. As long as there’s enough charge in the battery, the car will run as a pure EV, with a range of 88 km on the WLTP cycle. It’s when the battery reaches around 20% charge that petrol power is called upon. Here’s where SHS deviates from existing PHEVs, as most of the time the engine is never actually connected to the wheels mechanically. Instead, the four-pot is used as a generator, spinning a second motor – an integrated starter-generator (ISG) – to pump electricity into the battery, which is then used to power the drive motor. At around 70 km/h, the engine clutches in and drives the direct-drive transmission in concert with the electric motor, and by 80 km/h it fully takes over, as the ICE is more efficient at higher speeds. This is why the claimed total system output of 347 PS and 525 Nm is slightly misleading, as the two power sources only combine over a very small speed range. Most of the time, it’s the 204 PS electric motor that pulls the car, and the zero-to-100 km/h time of 8.5 seconds reflects that. In that sense, the J7 PHEV functions more like a series-parallel hybrid just with a much bigger battery, with parallels (no pun intended) able to be drawn between SHS and Honda’s mechanically-similar e:HEV system – another series hybrid that can clutch the engine in at higher speeds. In fact, Honda actually sells a CR-V e:PHEV in Europe that uses the same concept. The more symbiotic relationship between the petrol engine and electric motor is also why the J7 PHEV will automatically revert from EV to hybrid mode once the battery charge drops to around 20%, even though the instrument display will say there is still some EV range remaining (although there is a way to force it back into EV mode if you so require). The engine cannot move the car without the electric motor, and vice versa (the car will not let you drive without any fuel in the tank). So equipped, the J7 PHEV is capable of achieving a combined fuel consumption of 4.9 litres per 100 km, which doesn’t sound all that impressive in a world where a BMW 330e can hit 2.2 litres per 100 km. But the Jaecoo counters with something the 330e can never hope to achieve – even with the electricity “depleted”, this figure only rises to 5.99 litres per 100 km. This is why the car is able to eke out a total range of 1,200 km with a 60 litre fuel tank, which we’ve been able to confirm on a drive from Singapore to Thailand. While this plug-in hybrid is marketed as simply the J7 PHEV in Malaysia, the Chinese office was keen on not using that moniker, in an effort to distance the car from traditional PHEVs. In other markets, the car is sold as the J7 SHS, drawing attention to it being a “super hybrid”, i.e. a hybrid with a big battery. The other concern is the said battery’s longevity, with buyers of premium PHEVs having been burned by expensive failures. Obviously, any conclusions on reliability will have to wait until the customer cars collect proper mileage. For what it’s worth, however, the unit in the J7 PHEV is rated to last up to one million kilometres, and Omoda & Jaecoo Malaysia has offered the car with a ten-year/1,000,000 km battery warranty as a promotion on occasion, so the company does stand by its claim. The battery is also rated to withstand temperatures ranging from -35 degrees Celcius to 60 degrees Celcius and carries an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance, meaning that the pack can be submerged in at least one metre of water for a length of time (Omoda & Jaecoo claims it’s been tested for 48 hours). That’s not to say that you should start hunting for water-fording opportunities, but if a J7 PHEV does conk out while traversing through floodwater, the battery (probably) wouldn’t be the problem. Other features include up to 40 kW in DC fast charging capability, topping up the battery from 30 to 80% in 20 minutes, along with 6.6 kW AC charging that fully charges the pack in under four hours. The car also comes with a 3.3 kW vehicle-to-load (V2L) function that, among other things, can power a projector – the J7 PHEV even comes with a white underside for its tonneau cover that allows it to be used as a projector screen. The J7 PHEV is not the only highlight of the Omoda & Jaecoo Carnival, of course – the company will also preview the soon-to-be-launched Omoda C9 PHEV, which uses a more powerful all-wheel-drive version of the SHS and a three-speed DHT with a greater focus on performance. We’ve also already driven that car in an eco challenge in South Africa (to victory, we might add), and you can check it out here. The O&J Carnival will take place at Desa Park City from August 21 to 24, from 10 am to 10 pm.
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