Styling
Featuring Jaecoo's signature 'waterfall' grille and having a body that looks somewhat like a smoothed-off version of the Tiggo 9, the resulting 8 SHS-P is a properly handsome thing. It's long, wide and tall with a sizeable wheelbase on it, while rising swage and waistline details on the side contrast with a tapering roofline, so it looks poised in profile even when it's standing still. There are 20-inch alloys in the arches as standard, with the only wheel option being a J-pattern rim to emphasise this vehicle's, er... Jaecooery nature, and while most of the five-strong palette of body colours are quite sedate, the two-tone finish with a contrast black roof (which is an option on the Luxury and standard for the Executive) gives the J8 some real visual purpose. We like it. A lot.
Interior
This is arguably the best Chery Group interior we've seen yet. Actually, scratch 'arguably'. Material finishing is broadly superb, the integration of tech feels far more naturalistic and sensitive than simply slapping a gigantic tablet in the middle of the dash and then hoping for the best by running everything through it (the twin 12.3-inch displays in the J8 are fab, though, so it's not technology-poor by any stretch of the imagination), and with some glorious colourways including the splendid Cognac upholstery within, the Jaecoo's cabin feels like a thoroughly prestigious place to spend some time.
What we also like are proper, recessed window switches in here (which make a mockery of the stupid upright tabs in the Jaecoo 7, items which are installed the wrong way around as well), dedicated physical controls for the door mirrors and the powered steering column, column stalks which are less 'Fisher Price' in terms of their plastic durability when compared the flimsy items found in the bizarrely popular J7 (that car again!), and a useful smattering of actual buttons for various features. So while we accept that the climate controls are still on the central touchscreen, somewhat detracting from all the admirable work Jaecoo has done elsewhere in here, we're pleased to say that this is the finest Chery passenger compartment we've seen when assessed holistically.
Practicality
Stowage and storage solutions throughout the cabin are more than decent and generously sized, while the boot is a whopper at 738 litres with the Jaecoo 8 in either four- or five-seat mode (more on this anon); there's even 200 litres of capacity with all three rows of seating deployed. And a maximum capacity of more than 2,000 litres is positively van-like, which means the J8 is off to a flyer here.
Therefore, this is an appropriate time to explain some of the confusion you might have if you've picked up on our seemingly conflicting few mentions of how many seats there are onboard the Jaecoo 8. Well, there are six. Or seven. Depending on spec.
Jaecoo is supposed to be Chery's rugged, outdoorsy, lifestyle brand, and the seven-seat Luxury-grade J8 is therefore being positioned as such. Opt for this car and the 2-3-2 configuration within includes four of the front five seats equipped with heating and ventilation, while the front two are also blessed with massaging functionality. But stump up for the grander Executive, as tested here, and the middle-row seating switches from a bench to a couple of ultra-plush captain's chairs, which are also electrically adjustable and fitted with the massage gear. Jaecoo would like to have you believe that this one will not be venturing into forests with healthy-looking families installed inside the cabin for plenty of soft-focus adventures with lots of lens flare, but will instead be whisking high-powered business types and dignitaries about as, well, executive transport.
There is a pay-off, though, in having the six-seat layout, in that the boot space is limited to the previously stated 738 litres in the Executive, as the captain's chairs don't fold down as the bench does in the Luxury. Also, even Jaecoo itself refers to the two vehicles as '4+2' and '5+2' as well, acknowledging that the accommodation in the third row of either 8 SHS-P is pretty, um, cosy. There's also a big step up in the floor of the SUV from row two into row three, which means those rear-most pair of seats are going to be occasional-use items only, and even then probably just for smaller kids.
Performance
Although its drivetrain is predicated on a 1.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine, as found in other, lesser PHEVs across the Chery Group, the Jaecoo 8 nevertheless uses the more-powerful iteration of the set-up and the latest, fifth-gen take on the ICE unit for the most refined running. First seen in the
Omoda 9, where it makes 449hp, here the powertrain is slightly detuned to 428hp, accompanied by 580Nm of torque, which is a specification that matches the same set-up in the Tiggo 9.
And, like those two aforementioned stablemates, the Jaecoo 8 has the three-speed DHT gearbox and all-wheel drive, as well as a whopping great 34.46kWh battery pack. That, on its own, gives the J8 up to 83 miles of all-electric range, while if you top those power cells right up to 100 per cent and brim the giant 70-litre tank full of unleaded, Jaecoo reckons you can go more than 700 miles in one hit - enough to get from London to Prague without stopping, should the whim take you for an impromptu Euro roadtrip.
What's best about this powertrain, though, is that it feels premium, because it bestows silky, effortless pace on the Jaecoo 8. Having more than 400 horsepower is in no way a prerequisite of a seven-seat family SUV with plug-in power, we know, but just having this sort of oomph at your disposal does make the Chinese machine seem upmarket and high quality.
Best of all, you don't ever really hear that 1.5 in action, so there's no strained revving from the J8 even when you're pushing it hard, and in all scenarios apart from absolutely full-bore acceleration away from 30mph zones, you'll never discern the convoluted three-speed transmission switching between ratios. Nicely judged brakes on the Jaecoo, as well.
Intriguingly, Jaecoo's UK top bods were a little reluctant to quote the WLTP economy figure, which is in the region of 200mpg; one of those ludicrous figures where PHEVs, especially ones with huge batteries like this, skew the data due to the vagaries of the testing process. Instead, we were told that around 50mpg is the 'depleted battery' figure the company will quote, and if you drive the J8 SHS-P without charging it on slower, congested roads then you might dip nearer 45mpg, while long motorway runs with a little more battery mixed in can elicit 60mpg-plus regularly. We were in this zone of returns during our test loop, where we were sampling the maximum acceleration a few times and not driving in a particularly efficient manner (although we did have plenty of battery charge to play with). And, frankly, we think in excess of 45mpg on mixed roads in a 2.2-tonne-plus, 428hp, (partly) petrol-powered SUV is rather good, all things considered.
Ride & Handling
We drove down to the Jaecoo 8 launch in the new 'darling' of Britain's roads, the Temu Range Rover itself, Jaecoo's own 7 PHEV. We'll bring you a full review of that car elsewhere on the site soon, but we're at an absolute loss to explain its extraordinary popularity, which saw a staggering 10,000-plus units of it registered in March 2026. Yeah, sure, there are some ultra-aggressive PCP deals available on the TRR, but the unrefined, noisy, uncomfortable and frankly unpleasant driving experience it serves up means we think the J7 is not nearly cheap enough to justify the huge compromises you'd have to put up with to live with one on a three-year finance deal.
And then we tried the J8, and it's a night-and-day improvement from the company. Now we know you're about to fire in and say 'yes, well, it should be, it's a bigger, grander and more expensive product than the J7', but the price difference between the two is about £10,000. It feels like it should be 60 grand. Even more, maybe. They're like cars from two entirely different manufacturers.
It takes about 50 yards in the Jaecoo 8, for example, to note with some satisfaction that it has surprisingly lovely steering. The delicious weight of it, the fantastic consistency of it across wider degrees of lock, the wonderful way the nose of the car responds progressively to driver inputs - it's Jaecoo's, and indeed the wider Chery Group's, best work yet in this regard. There's even a trace of meaningful feel at the helm, allowing a driver to quickly establish a clear line of dialogue between the steering wheel and the chassis of the J8. That means a rapport soon develops betwixt human occupant and the car, not something you can say of many of the Chinese newcomers we've driven in recent years.
Then there's the continuous damper control (CDC). The ride on the Jaecoo 8 isn't perfect, you understand, as the unsprung mass of the 20-inch alloys can occasionally discreetly come through the structure of the SUV when traversing significant potholes and abraded surfaces, while rippled washboard tarmac does generate a background level of patter from the SHS-P's secondary ride. But in the main, this car is quiet, it is comfortable, it is well-mannered and it keeps its shell nice and level as it smooths out the vast majority of lumps and bumps in the road.
This then translates into better-than-average handling, although you're not going to unrestrainedly thrill at the way the Jaecoo 8 goes through corners if you fling it in with some abandon. Nevertheless, grip levels are good, the body and wheel control stays composed, and the SHS-P can be swiftly hustled if you need it to be. It also doesn't feel its 2,252kg mass either, which is a boon.
Honestly, from a dynamic perspective, this is how you do a top-value car which feels like a bargain, rather than cheap and ill-resolved, when compared to established European, Korean, Japanese and American opposition. The J8 is everything in its class that the J7
isn't in the market sector below.
Value
While its driving experience might be very different from that of the car which is sweeping all before it in the UK for Jaecoo, the 8 SHS-P remains great value. Indeed, we were shown a slide of all the competitors the company has benchmarked as rivals, with their prices adjusted to try and match the comprehensive kitlist of the J8 (it comes with tonnes of stuff fitted as standard, including a 14-speaker Sony premium sound system, a massive pano roof, and heated and ventilated chairs in four positions of the cabin, with massaging seats up front in the Luxury and then the same tech fitted to the captain's chairs in the midriff of the Executive, as just an example of the generous bounty on offer here) as well as its significant drivetrain power, and you might very well think you're going to scoff that Jaecoo says the 8 is 89 per cent cheaper than something like a
BMW X5 xDrive50e. Or, further, when the Chinese upstart outfit also mentions the
Land Rover Defender PHEV as a rival, or either of the Volvos
XC90 T8 or, perhaps slightly more plausibly, the
plug-in XC60 as comparable.
But is it so ridiculous to rule out all the above? Only the Beemer has more power than the Jaecoo 8, yet its rear seats are even more bijou than those in the far-eastern machine. None of the P300e Landy nor either of the Volvos can match the 428hp of the J8, either (no, we're not wrong; the '26MY T8s from Sweden are now down to 406hp, rather than their previous 455 horses). So really, they're probably all trading on badge cred and maybe a slightly higher standard of interior finishing to justify their much higher price tags.
And then things like the beautifully boxy
Hyundai Santa Fe, as well as the
Nissan X-Trail e-Power and the
Volkswagen Tayron eHybrid, ought to be even more worried. None of these, or another host of similar machines such as the
Mazda CX-80 and
Honda CR-V among more, can match the output of the Jaecoo, nor its sense of interior opulence, nor the 'kitchen sink' equipment roster - and they're all still 20-30 per cent more expensive, like for like, than the J8.
Because Jaecoo is going to sell the Luxury model of the 8 from £45,500, while the Executive will kick off at £47,500. About the only things you can do to either are choose cost-option paints or interior finishes including the glorious Cognac look of our test car (bear in mind, though, that none of the 'leather' inside the Jaecoo 8 comes from a cow, even the upgraded 'Nappa' trim in the Executive; good news if you're a vegan, though), but even so less than 50 grand for such a powerful, well-finished and classy-to-drive SUV as this looks like a bargain, considering how capably Jaecoo has executed the finished product.
Verdict
As we said at the top of the piece, every subsequent Chery Group vehicle which launches is markedly better than the last. So, in a frighteningly short space of time, this affiliation of car brands has gone from some fairly ho-hum creations like the
Omoda 5 and
Chery Tiggo 7, to far more convincing things such as the Tiggo 9 and this deeply impressive Jaecoo 8.
We might just have to stop short of saying the J8 SHS-P is brilliant or outright exceptional, as there remain a few minor quirks and negatives to consider, but we did think very, very hard about potentially doling out our first 4.5-star mark for a Chery Group product for this one. We've declined to at this stage, purely on the basis we didn't spend a huge amount of time at the Jaecoo 8's wheel to see if it either grated on our nerves with prolonged exposure or alternatively enamoured us even more to its charms, but we'll book one in for a week-long test at some point to check in on the big SUV again. Nevertheless, at this rate of developmental progress from this Chinese conglomerate, we don't think it'll be that long until we finally do move to another, elevated level of critical appraisal.
