Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid Charging Cable

Inlet type	Type 2 for AC, CCS2 for DC
Max onboard AC	6.6 kW single phase
On a UK home supply	6.6 kW, the full rate
Charge port position	Offside rear quarter panel
Cable we recommend	Type 2 to Type 2, 16A is enough; 32A does no harm

What the car will actually take

Everything turns on a 6.6 kW single phase charger. Around 29 amps at 230 volts is comfortably within a domestic supply, so nothing is lost to the phase count, and a bigger wall box changes nothing because the limit is built into the car.

Chery UK publishes no AC charging rate anywhere, not on the model pages and not in the brochures, so the figure comes from Chery's international site and from its own right-hand-drive specification sheets. Chery Indonesia puts the charge time at about three hours from a 6.6 kW wall charger, and a UK road test recorded roughly two and a half hours. Both are consistent with 6.6 kW and neither is compatible with 7.4.

One figure on Chery's own international page should be ignored: it quotes a nought to one hundred per cent time of 100 minutes at 6.6 kW for an 18.3 kWh battery. That is only eleven kilowatt hours of energy, so the number cannot be right. Around three hours is the answer.

A plug-in hybrid with real rapid charging

Unlike most plug-in hybrids the Tiggo 7 has a genuine CCS2 socket, rated at 40 kW, and Chery UK quotes thirty to eighty per cent in twenty minutes. On an 18.4 kWh battery that is a meaningful facility rather than a marketing line: half the pack back while you queue for a coffee.

It also means the home cable and the rapid socket divide the work sensibly. The Type 2 lead does the cheap overnight charging that makes a plug-in hybrid worth owning, and the CCS socket handles the days when you have run the battery down away from home.

How long a full charge takes

Cable	Power drawn at home	Empty to full, 18.4 kWh battery	Range added per hour
Type 2, 16A at 6.6 kW, the car maximum	6.6 kW	3 hours 15 mins	about 23 miles
Type 2, 16A at 3.6 kW	3.6 kW	5 hours 45 mins	about 13 miles
Type 2 to 3 Pin from a socket	2.3 kW	9 hours	about 8 miles

Those times come from dividing the pack by the delivered power and adding 13 per cent for losses, then rounding to the quarter hour. Range added per hour assumes a year round 3.5 miles per kWh rather than a best case figure. The pack is quoted as 18.4 kWh by Chery UK and 18.3 by Chery internationally, with no usable figure published anywhere, so the table works from the larger of the two and is a little pessimistic.

No cable can lift that figure: the onboard charger decides it. The top row is what the car can do and no cable improves on it. Chery quotes 56 miles of electric range, so a three hour evening charge on a cheap tariff covers most days without the engine starting.

Which length for a Tiggo 7

Chery's own right-hand-drive specification sheets give the charge port location as driver's side rear, which on a UK car means the offside rear quarter panel. The Tiggo 7 is 4.5 metres long, so the socket is a long way from the front bumper.

That pushes us towards 10 metres as the default. Five metres works where you reverse onto the drive and the charge point is close to that rear corner; anything else and the lead has to travel the length of the car first. Work it out from where the car genuinely sits, not where it could sit, and leave slack.

How these cables are built

Construction is to IEC 62196-2 with CE marking, IP55 weather protection and a -30C to +50C operating range.

On the three pin side the standard is IEC 62752, with CE marking, IP67 sealing and a -30C to +60C range. It carries a two year manufacturer's warranty, ships free on next working day delivery, and can go back inside 30 days.

Also from Chery: Chery Tiggo 8 Super Hybrid Charging Cable. The full range of Chery charging cables is on one page.