Jaecoo J7 PHEV launching this month – 4.9 l/100km, 88 km EV range, 1,200 km total range, RM170k est

Eight months on from its first preview in Malaysia, the Jaecoo J7 PHEV will finally be launched this month. This news was confirmed three weeks ago, but Jaecoo Malaysia has officially gotten the ball rolling on its teaser campaign with an image it has just shared on its Facebook page.

The photo above was taken during a fuel efficiency drive last month, in which a group of Malaysian and Singaporean motoring journalists (including yours truly) drove a mammoth 1,066 km from Singapore to Hat Yai. During the trip, our car managed to average 3.8 litres per 100 km almost entirely on highways and still had 190 km of range remaining, as estimated by the car’s trip computer.

The J7 PHEV will be launched in front-wheel-drive form to start, locally assembled with an estimated price of RM170,000; given Jaecoo’s form over the past year, we expect the actual car to retail far less than that. As the name suggests, the car is the plug-in hybrid version of the popular J7, with a few visual and ergonomic tweaks to go with the powertrain change, including new aero wheels.

Under the bonnet is of course where the single biggest difference lies. Out goes the 1.6 litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine and seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, replaced by a hybrid-specific 1.5 litre unit that produces 143 PS and 215 Nm of torque. This is augmented by a 204 PS/310 Nm electric motor and a single-speed dedicated hybrid transmission (DHT) for a total of 347 PS and 525 Nm.

So equipped, the car can get from zero to 100 km/h seven tenths of a second quicker at 8.5 seconds, but the biggest beneficiary is fuel consumption, which drops to a claimed 4.9 litres per 100 km; even the battery depleted, this figure only rises to 5.99 litres per 100 km.

Meanwhile, the BYD-sourced 18.3 kWh Blade lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery delivers a WLTP-rated electric range of 88 km, and together with the comparatively large 60 litre fuel tank, Jaecoo claims an overall range of 1,200 km. As the test suggests, the carmaker has been quite conservative with those figures.

The J7 PHEV won’t be the only Jaecoo launched this year – the company also plans to debut the all-electric J6 and the larger three-row J8 soon.

The post Jaecoo J7 PHEV launching this month – 4.9 l/100km, 88 km EV range, 1,200 km total range, RM170k est appeared first on Paul Tan's Automotive News.