Omoda 9 review 2025 | New car reviews

Make and model: Omoda 9
Description: Large electric SUV
Price range: from £xx

Omoda says: “The Omoda 9 is a premium flagship SUV that blends elegance and style with impressive power and traction.”

We say: The Omoda 9 is a spacious and well-equipped plug-in hybrid SUV, with excellent electric range and plenty of performance, although it lacks the last degree of refinement that premium rivals offer.

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Introduction

This is the Omoda 9, a medium-large plug-in hybrid SUV and the top model in the fledgling model range from new Chinese brand, Omoda. It hit UK showrooms at the start of summer 2025, aiming to offer a premium SUV experience for a price similar to mainstream Western brands.

Unlike the smaller Omoda 5, which is also available in an electric version (the Omoda E5), the Omoda 9 is only available with one powertrain. That’s a petrol/electric plug-in hybrid, which offers what sounds like quite an appealing balance of long battery range in EV mode, the security of a petrol engine for long journeys, and bucketloads of performance for a family SUV.

But does reality live up to the theory? We attended the UK launch of the Omoda 9 to find out more.

What is it?

The Omoda 9 is a medium-to-large SUV, which is known as a ‘D-segment’ SUV in automotive jargon. In human terms, that makes it similar in size and shape to cars like the Audi Q5, BMW X3, Range Rover Velar, Volkswagen Tiguan and Volvo XC60.

Visually, it’s a mostly clean design both inside and out, although the front end might look a little fussy to some potential customers. Like many new cars, the nose is dominated by a lot of LED strip lighting that runs across the width of the car and then down the front corners. The grille is quite detailed up close, either dozens of diamond shapes of various sizes. Overall, it seems to strike a decent balance between distinctive and overdone.

Unlike most other Chinese brands, Omoda is not going all-in on EV models. The Omoda 9 is only available (for the time being at least, as it could change in future if demand dictates) as a plug-in hybrid.

The company is particularly proud of its plug-in powertrain, which it calls Super Hybrid System (SHS). It offers up to 93 miles of electric driving, according to official UK/EU lab figures, so the vast majority of most drivers’ mileage can be done on electricity alone without needing assistance from the petrol engine.

Unlike some other plug-in hybrid units, the Omoda system also ensures that the battery never runs down to zero – if charge is getting low, it will use the petrol engine to generate electricity for the battery. That means you can always be confident of getting the full 449hp every time you accelerate, rather than suddenly finding you have much less available because the electric motor has no electricity and the petrol engine has to do all the work on its own.

What do you get for your money?

As with almost every new brand that is trying to establish itself in a new market, Omoda’s strategy is to offer more for less. There’s only one specification available, priced at £44,990, but it undercuts the price of similar cars from established brands and is loaded up with lots of standard kit that is often optional elsewhere. The only extra cost item is fancy paint (white is standard, black/grey/green are an extra £750 and matte grey is £1,000).

For your £45K, you get quite a lot of performance, equipment and space. Power comes from a 1.5-litre petrol engine paired with an electric motor and a decent-sized battery, driving all four wheels. Unlike some cars in this segment, however, the Omoda 9 is a dedicated five-seat SUV, rather than a seven-seater.

Equipment levels are very good, with plenty of luxury features. There are all the things you’d expect, like: big alloy wheels, panoramic sunroof, adaptive cruise control, a full suite of active safety systems, head-up display, power tailgate, and so on.

Then there are things you might not expect – sure, heated front seats are nothing new, and ventilated seats are even becoming commonplace, but the Omoda 9 gets heated and ventilated seats in the rear as well as the front. Those rear seats also electrically recline. The side windows are also double laminated to make the cabin quieter, while the suspension is electromagnetically controlled. Most other cars don’t offer these at any price.

Expert tips

• Just the one engine and trim level, paint colour is the only optional extra
• Plenty of equipment for the money
• Seven-year/100,000-mile new car warranty

What’s the Omoda 9 like inside?

Step inside the Omoda 9 and first impressions are positive. The cabin is not as minimalist as a Tesla or most of the newest Chinese SUVs arriving in the UK. There’s a sweeping dashboard with a wide, high centre console separating the driver and front passenger. It all certainly looks a lot more inviting than the interior of most mainstream SUVs, and even puts some premium brands to shame.

There’s a lot of space, although the high centre console does make the driver feel somewhat cocooned. Not in a cramped way, but more of a ‘business class suite’ way. All UK cars will have a black synthetic leather interior, which is a shame as the lighter coloured interiors available in other markets look very nice, but UK buyers overwhelmingly choose black interiors so Omoda is giving the people what they want…

The front seats have decent adjustment, although the cushion feels quite narrow so you feel like you’re sitting on the seat rather than in it. The driver’s headrest contains speakers, so you can have music, podcasts or phone conversations piped only to your ears directly, rather than to everyone in the car. We’d prefer more reach adjustment for the steering wheel, but that’s a common shortcoming on many family cars.

Rear seating space is very good, and the two outer back-seat passengers will certainly appreciate the ability to heat, ventilate and recline their seats. As usual, the middle passenger misses out, although at least they’ll have a nice, flat floor with no big hump in the middle.

The dashboard follows the almost-universal mid-2020s layout of twin 12-inch screens mounted side-by-side to look like one ultrawide screen – one behind the wheel for driving information and the other to the left as a touchscreen infotainment system. The operating system loads quickly and responds promptly to your tapping with no noticeable lag, which is better than some other cars. The screen resolution is good, although the menu layout is not sufficiently logical in its layout for adjusting on the move. Omoda is also guilty of the same crime that affects most car manufacturers by making many of the fonts too small to read easily on the move.

Omoda is keen to point out that the 9 includes proper physical controls for key functions like climate control and drive modes, which is welcome at a time when most car manufacturers are still going the other way and forcing all controls onto the central touchscreen. Seat controls are on the door, Mercedes-style, and the gearlever is on a convenient, also Mercedes-style, column stalk.

The only negative here is that some of the materials tend to look better than they feel. Some of the artificial leather feels stiff and thin, while some of the plastics feel a bit hard and brittle rather than soft and squishy. If you’re comparing the Omoda 9 against mainstream brands, it’s pretty much on par. But if you’re doing as Omoda suggests and comparing with the UK’s favourite premium German brands (Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz), it lacks a little material quality.

Expert tips

• Interior layout looks sumptuous, although some niggles in layout and operating system
• Make sure you test drive an Omoda 9 to make sure you can get comfortable in the driver’s seat, which feels quite narrow compared to some other cars

What’s the Omoda 9 like to drive?

For most family travel, the Omoda 9 is a comfy cruiser. It’s very quiet, very smooth and very refined, especially since it can run as an EV for most of your driving needs. But it can also summon up fearsome performance when required.

For urban driving, the electric motor is more than capable of handling the load alone. With an official 93-mile battery range, you could easily end up doing almost all of your local driving as an EV (albeit one that’s carrying around a couple of hundred kilos of unused petrol engine). If you can charge the car at home on a regular basis, you might rarely need to wake up the petrol engine at all.

Driving in electric mode around town, the Omoda 9 is almost silent inside. When the petrol engine is called upon to join the electric motor, the transition between petrol and electric power is almost seamless. There is a dull engine note, but it’s fairly unintrusive and if you have the stereo going, you’re unlikely to notice it at all.

The car’s management software also ensures that the battery is maintained at a certain level of charge, even if that means using the petrol engine as a generator to provide electricity, so you’ll always have the same level of performance when you put your foot down. This is a key point because not all plug-in hybrids are this clever – without this energy management, you lose a large chunk of performance if the battery runs out of electricity as the electric motor simply shuts down and you’re back to driving a petrol car.

Maximum performance is super impressive, as the Omoda 9 can summon up almost 450hp with the petrol and electric motors working together. With that power driving through all four wheels, it means you can get from rest to 60mph in less than five seconds. But, in reality, you won’t want to.

The Omoda 9 is a car that feels more comfortable at cruising pace, rather than trying to hurry it along. This is a large-ish, tall-ish, comfort-oriented SUV, so it’s not suited to hooning around. The ride is generally comfortable, especially on open roads or motorways, but the handling is uninspired and the suspension gets unsettled on bumpier roads, and the car tends to lean in corners. It’s never concerning, but it’s also not especially pleasant to drive fast and your passengers are unlikely to enjoy the experience. Far better to ease off a bit and take things more gently.

Even if you’re running low on electricity and relying on the petrol engine to provide power as well as generate electricity, fuel economy should still be 40mpg or better so your running costs will be very acceptable on longer journeys without regular charging. But if you are able to charge the car at home on a cheap tariff, you could find that your running costs are as cheap as dedicated EV for most of your driving needs.

Expert tips

• Excellent battery range and capable electric motor mean you can do a lot of daily driving in pure electric mode
• Acceleration is excellent, with both electric and petrol motors working together
• Brakes are quite sensitive, but you get used to them easily enough
• This is a car built for gentle cruising and urban driving, not sports car-like handling

How safe is the Omoda 9?

At time of writing (early July 2025), the Omoda 9 has not been assessed by Euro NCAP, so we can’t definitively answer that question.

All the crucial safety kit you’d expect to see is included as standard, which is good news. There are airbags aplenty, as well as the latest-generation accident avoidance technology.

As with pretty much all new cars, the Omoda 9 has the latest EU-mandated warning systems that will beep and bong at you constantly unless you disable them. This means you’ll get bonged at whenever the speed limit changes, or whenever you happen to drift one single mile per hour over that limit, or whenever it thinks you may possibly be distracted, or whenever it thinks you may possibly be tired, and so on.

The theory is great, but these systems simply don’t work and Omoda’s application of them is more annoying than most other brands. The good news is that this is something that the manufacturer should be able to improve via over-the-air software updates, so we hope that this will be the case.

You can disable some of the most annoying systems fairly easily but the EU mandates that they must be reactivated every time you start the car, so it becomes part of your pre-drive checklist to switch the bongs off before each trip. Yes, this seems ridiculous for what are ostensibly safety systems, but that’s where we’re at.

Expert tips

• Euro NCAP has yet to assess the Omoda 9, so we’ll update this section when we have more information

Verdict

In many ways, the Omoda 9 is a great buy. You’re getting a spacious SUV with loads of kit, great performance, plenty of battery range for a plug-in hybrid, and a long warranty – all at a price that significantly undercuts rivals.

If you’re a keen driver or you spend a lot time on country B-roads, you’ll be less satisfied with how the Omoda 9 feels behind the wheel. The ride quality is fine on smooth roads like A-roads and motorways, but less settled on undulating or winding tarmac. It’s a far happier car when you ease off and take a more relaxed approach.

The biggest attraction is the outstanding electric range. Omoda has been conducting various economy runs to show how far the car can go on one tank of fuel and a full charge of electricity (more than 700 miles), but that’s rather missing the point. The main benefit of the Omoda 9’s EV-focused powertrain is the reassurance that you can do most or even all of your day-to-day driving on purely electric power, but still have a petrol engine in reserve for those occasional longer journeys where you’re not able to recharge as regularly.

If you like the idea of an electric car but you’re not comfortable with the idea of going completely petrol-free, the Omoda 9 makes quite a compelling offer. For plenty of customers, it will be more than enough.

Expert recommendations

• Any plug-in hybrid makes the most financial sense if you can charge the car at home or work on a very cheap tariff. If you’re charging at public chargers, the electricity is usually a lot more expensive.
• Still awaiting Euro NCAP safety testing results

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