You may not have heard of Omoda, which is not surprising. It’s a new car company from China that arrived here in the UK in 2024.
Omoda is the first car brand from Chinese giant Chery to launch here in the UK, arriving last summer and followed earlier this year by sister brand Jaecoo. The two brands are working in tandem, targeting different customers but building a joint dealer network across the country.
The company describes Omoda as being a ‘fashion forward’ brand that competes with other mainstream names, while Jaecoo is positioned as a more premium offering. As of right now (May 2025), each brand only has one SUV-style model available, so this strategy may not yet be evident. It should become more clearly defined, however, as more models join the two line-ups later this year.
So who or what is Omoda?
If you follow the car industry, you may have heard of Omoda’s parent company, Chery, which is a state-owned car manufacturer that has been around for about 30 years and has been China’s largest car exporter for most of that time. As with China’s other big car companies, it operates a number of subsidiary brands in different markets around the world – as well as Omoda and Jaecoo, it has Aiqar, Exeed, Exlantix, iCar, Jetour, Lepas, Luxeed and Rely, as well as Chery itself.
Omoda doesn’t exist in China itself, being purely an export brand. The same cars offered here are sold under different brand names in their home market. It’s not the first time a major car company has done this – Japanese giant Toyota launched its Lexus luxury brand in the late 1980s, but didn’t start selling Lexus-branded cars in Japan until the mid-2000s. Honda launched its American-focused premium brand, Acura, at about the same time but still doesn’t sell Acura in Japan today.
Omoda has only existed for about two years, but is being steadily introduced to a number of markets across Europe and Africa, and in Mexico. The brand is also sold in Russia, which is obviously controversial as most Western car brands have withdrawn from the country since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Like most emerging names in the Chinese car industry, Omoda is heavily invested in electric vehicle technology. But unlike many of the other Chinese brands arriving in the UK, Omoda will continue to launch petrol and hybrid models over the coming years.
When did Omoda launch in the UK?
Omoda & Jaecoo UK set up shop in early 2024, building up its dealer and aftersales network before launching the Omoda brand with its first cars in the autumn of 2024. There’s already a pipeline of new models lined up for the next 12 months.
Sister brand Jaecoo followed at the start of 2025, and the company is rapidly expanding its sales network across the UK, targeting more than 120 dealerships by the end of this year.
What models does Omoda have and what else is coming?
Omoda launched in the UK with a pair of mid-size SUV models called the Omoda 5 (petrol) and Omoda E5 (electric). The Omoda 5 is called the Omoda C5 in some markets, but we assume that Citroën had something to say about that for Europe since it uses the C5 name already.
The Omoda 5 is powered by a 1.6-litre petrol engine, and there’s apparently a hybrid model set to join the range by the end of 2025.
The Omoda 5 EV is (as you can probably guess) an electric version of the same vehicle. It has a different front-end design since it doesn’t need a grille to suck cool air into a petrol engine, but from the front wheels back it looks the same. Inside, the E5 gets a sleeker cabin than the petrol version, with a larger central touchscreen and other improvements.
Over the second half of 2025, things will get busy for Omoda with two new models joining the line-up. The first model, launching in summer, will be the Omoda 9, a large plug-in hybrid SUV that will compete with cars like the Volkswagen Tayron, Vauxhall Grandland, Peugeot 5008 and so on.
Later in the year, we’ll see the Omoda 7. As you can probably guess, this will sit between the Omoda 5 and Omoda 9 on size and price, and will also be available as a plug-in hybrid. It will go into a very competitive market against cars like the Volkswagen Tiguan, Peugeot 3008, Nissan Qashqai, Kia Sportage and many, many more. We have had an exclusive drive of this vehicle in a two-day trek across China last month, and if Omoda can get the pricing right then it should be very successful here in the UK.
By next year, we should also see the smaller Omoda 3, yet another SUV, and there’s also an update for the Omoda 5 pencilled in as well, which will bring it more closely into line with its E5 electric sibling. At this stage, we don’t have any indication of any models coming to the UK that are not SUVs, but that could change depending on demand.
Where can I try an Omoda car?
Since setting up shop in the UK in early 2024, Omoda and Jaecoo have established 72 dealerships across the UK, thanks to agreements with large motoring groups like Arnold Clark, Listers and Endeavour. Chery has further expansion plans, and intends to expand its Omoda-Jaecoo dealership network to 130 different outlets by the end of this year. That will make it one of the larger dealer networks in the UK.
The company has key finance partnerships in place with established lenders, with BNP Paribas providing consumer finance and Arval UK providing leasing solutions.
The brand has no plans to offer direct online sales at this time, with the company aiming to grow its two brands through its dealer network and fleet programmes.
What’s particularly significant about Omoda?
Unlike the rest of the new wave of Chinese car manufacturers heading to Europe, Omoda plans to offer petrol and plug-in hybrid models alongside the inevitable electric vehicles.
As with Jaecoo, Omoda has a wide range of potential vehicles it can pull from the wider Chery family, so it can react quickly to UK demand for models of any size, shape or fuel type. Initially, the line-up will all be SUVs, but that could change over time.
Jaecoo models come with a seven-year/100,000-mile new car warranty, which is one of the best in the industry.
What’s in a name?
The name Omoda doesn’t come from the company’s founder, or some piece of ancient Chinese wisdom, or anything remotely meaningful. The reality is a bit more formulaic.
It’s a portmanteau of O – the chemical symbol for oxygen – and the Italian word moda, meaning ‘fashion’. The company has adopted a similar process for Jaecoo, whose name comes from a combination of the German word Jaeger, meaning ‘hunter’, and the English word cool. So “Jaecoo” is supposed to mean “a cool hunter”.
It’s another lesson the Chinese car manufacturers seem to have learned from the Japanese – Lexus, Acura, Infiniti and Eunos were all made-up names for fledgling export-oriented car brands that were supposed to sound important and meaningful in English…
Omoda doesn’t have a logo as such, simply a wordmark with the brand name proudly set in capital letters across the bonnet and tailgate of each car.
Summary
It’s easy to dismiss Omoda as yet another Chinese car company with big plans for the UK, and there have been quite a few in recent years. But there’s good reason to think that Omoda and Jaecoo are two brands that will last.
Chery is one of China’s largest car companies, building more than 2.6 million cars last year. By comparison, the entire UK car industry built less than a third of that number…
The company has already made a significant investment to build its two brands across Europe, with at least one more brand likely to be joining Omoda and Jaecoo next year. It has a choice of cars from the wider Chery family that it can choose to bring to the UK with either of its brands to react to market trends, and has built a network of more than 70 dealers already.
The company has big plans for growth in the UK, so as the Omoda model range fills out over the next year, you’re likely to see a lot more of them around.
This article was originally published in late 2023, and was updated in May 2025 to reflect Omoda’s rapid growth.
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