Chery Omoda 5 vs Chery Omoda E5

What's the difference?

Finding a half-decent small SUV for less than $30,000 has become quite challenging in the past couple of years. But as mainstream brands march further upmarket, some Chinese manufacturers are happy to grab sales at the lower end of the market.

One such brand, Chery, re-emerged with the Omoda 5 compact crossover about 18 months ago with keen pricing and loads of standard features.

Further pushing the value point, Chery recently added a new base grade of the Omoda 5, the FX. It sits under the Omoda 5 BX and EX with the same powertrain and it only loses a handful of features from the BX.

At $27,000 drive-away, it looks like a steal on paper. But how does the new cut-price Omoda 5 handle urban duties? And does this small SUV offer more than just a solid standard features list?

Okay, this is getting crazy. It feels like barely a week of 2024 is going by without another value-focused, pure-electric SUV hitting the Australian new-car market. 

And this is the latest, the Chery Omoda E5, a compact, five-seater with the performance and range to challenge some other relatively recent arrivals.

It joins the internal combustion Omoda 5, variations of which have proliferated in the roughly 18 months it’s been on sale here.

This is CarsGuide’s first look and we’ve assessed everything from value and practicality to safety and driving performance. So, stay with us to see if this EV could be your entree into the world of battery-electric SUVs.