Omoda 7 Revealed
The second model from the Chinese brand has been revealed. Meet the Omoda 7, earmarked for South Africa in 2025.
The Omoda 7 was revealed at parent brand’s headquarters in Wuhu, Anhui Province, China and we were in attendance.
As a reminder, the local Omoda lineup currently comprises the C5, a futuristic-looking crossover. We’d assume the 7 would be named C7 locally, to keep with the naming convention.
Positioned as a sporty SUV, the Omoda 7 is 4 621 metres long, 1 872 metres wide and has a height of 1 673. A wheelbase of 2 700 is claimed. These figures put it in the same ballpark as popular models like the Kia Sportage, Toyota RAV4, and Volkswagen Tiguan. While most modern car designs are pretty formulaic, Omoda has given its 7 some clever touches to make it stand out a bit more.
We were allowed to sit inside the pre-production unit and got a sense of the visual appeal and material feel. The biggest talking point will be the 15.6-inch infotainment screen that’s able to slide away from the driver and over to the passenger side. The system has 128 gb of storage space and boasts 2.5K resolution. The responsiveness and graphics quality are impressive, based a quick test of the pre-prototype’s system.
Omoda was keen to show off its 12+2 speaker arrangement and the brand claims it offers 3D stage sound. There’s also an intelligent fragrance system as well as an 8-inch heads-up display.
When it comes to self-driving semi-autonomous tech and safety, the Omoda 7 comes equipped with an arsenal of radars and cameras, and will have all the features like adaptive cruise control, lane-departure warning, autonomous emergency braking and so on. Omoda says the new model has 6 airbags.
While all powertrain details are yet to be made available, we’d suspect the newcomer would follow parent company Chery’s strategy of offering turbocharged petrol power as well as plug-in hybrid derivatives. We assume the new 7 will feature a version of the 1.5-litre/1.6-litre turbocharged plug-in hybrid petrol engine and Omoda claims a range of 1 200 km. While that sounds impressive, there was no fuel tank size given, so we’ll take it with a pinch for salt for now, and await further technical details.
We wouldn’t rule out a completely electric version either, but given the challenges faced by BEVs, we don’t think that’s viable for our market. Besides, the Omoda E5 will be touching down locally towards the end of the year.
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