Chery Tiggo 9 vs Mercedes-Benz E300

What's the difference?

The Chery Tiggo 9 Super Hybrid is outstanding in many ways, especially value and the way it drives. I can only stress the importance of charging this vehicle frequently, however, otherwise it will go from super hybrid to super fuel consumer.

The E-Class is stacked with kit, looks great, and is an effective and comfortable way to get around in built-up areas or across the countryside.

While it’s not the most dynamically engaging - it’s pipped by its Bavarian rival there - it offers more comfort-oriented features than most, and the cabin is a pleasant place to spend a day driving.

If you're disposed towards stumping up the asking price, the extra outlay for the 'Plus Package' will probably be most relevant to you if you’re covering long distances due to the Airmatic suspension.

Otherwise, even a simple-spec E300 provides a step up from what you might expect from an executive sedan.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with accommodation and meals provided.

Chery has crafted a superb-looking SUV here. Sure, the design isn’t ground-breaking or unique, but styling is beautiful from the large grille and multi-spoke wheels to the chrome framed windows and smooth lines of the tailgate.

Our car was painted in 'Aurora Green', which looks stunning in the sunlight. There’s also 'Cosmic Black', 'Star White' and 'Technical Grey'.

The cabin is super modern and luxurious looking, with only a few physical buttons for the hybrid system and climate control. The leather seats are a lovely high-end touch, and while the level of refinement is not up there with the likes of Audi and Lexus flagships the build quality appears to be good.

The Tiggo 9 stretches 4800mm end to end and is 1930mm wide. That classifies it as a large SUV, albeit not an enormous one. A fairly short wheelbase of 2750mm means the cabin space isn’t as voluminous as you might have thought.

Evolution rather than revolution is obvious when it comes to the E-Class’ styling, but that’s in Mercedes’ best interests, because it’s still a good-looking thing, and being a bit subtle is warranted in the executive sedan game.

The biggest changes come in the headlights and tail-lights. Up-front there are now more than one million pixels in the LED headlights, which have adaptive high beam as standard and are more connected to the grille via black trim, as has been seen in EQ electric models.

Underneath, the bumper now features an AMG-style 'A-wing' apron as part of the 'AMG Line' exterior package as standard. A set of 20-inch AMG alloys are also included.

To the rear, and the digital tail-lights feature a Mercedes-Benz star motif, making its lighting signature now more recognisable from behind.

The German Rainbow is well-represented with mostly shades of grey, black, or white available, though 'Verde Silver Metallic' is a slightly retro green, and 'Nautic Blue Metallic' is a subtle and classy tone.

The daring ‘Manufaktur’ shade of 'Patagonia Red Metallic' is a $2500 option, as is 'Opalite White Bright' while 'Alpine Grey Solid' is $2900.

The Chery Tiggo 9 is not overly large and with a relatively short wheelbase the cabin room is adequate but not outstanding. I’m tall at 189cm, but there is still room for me to sit behind my driving position and headroom is good, too. That said, the cabin floor is high which raises the knee height for second row passengers.

The third row is really just for children and for those occasional but unpredictable times when as a parent you’re suddenly thrown into having to transport more kids home or to parties.

Cabin storage is good with door pockets and cupholders front and back, while a large storage area under the centre console is great for loose items or even a handbag or small backpack.

The wireless charger is perfectly situated on top of the console and features a grippy soft surface.

I would have liked more physical dials and buttons for climate and the stereo, which are accessed through the central screen.

Boot space, according to Chery, is larger than it looks, with the manufacturer saying with the third row up there is 143 litres of cargo capacity and with five seats in place it's 819 litres.  

Inside, the E-Class should feel familiar to anyone who’s spent time in a recent Benz, though the Superscreen might be the main point of difference. It’s an immediately comfortable place, though, with a relatively visually busy cabin.

The seats and their adjustability mean most drivers and passengers, regardless of height and size, should feel supported (and ideally relaxed), while touch-points are mostly either leather upholstery or digital screens.

The steering wheel, also seen in plenty of other Mercedes models, is a bit of a let-down, however, with its haptic touch pads on a slightly busy two-tier layout. This millennial found it irritating, surely too will the usually older E-Class buyer.

There are a few other small annoyances, one being that the MBUX Assistant sometimes won’t hear a command, or that not everything seems to be able to be controlled by it. The climate control vent positions are electrically adjustable to certain pre-sets through the menu, but the MBUX Assistant isn’t able to do this for you.

And while the driver display and central multimedia screen are fairly user-friendly, it’s not always immediately apparent what the quickest way to find some information or a setting is.

Our test car was fitted with the 'Plus Package', which means four-zone climate control available to the rear seats, which my 180cm-tall self found spacious with plenty of headroom, kneeroom, and even a fair bit of room under the driver’s seat.

Behind the rear seats, there’s a generous 540 litres of boot space, exactly the same capacity as the previous generation E-Class.

While cross-shopping the E-Class and a BMW 5 Series would normally be relatively easy, the Merc’s $131,500 starting price, before on-road costs, puts it plenty north of the base 520i, the only petrol one available, at $114,900. The electric i5 eDrive40 starts from $155,900, more than $20K over the Mercedes.

But the E-Class is stacked with features as standard, and while there are a couple of option packs, Mercedes Australia has tried to streamline the most popular features and specifications into the E300.

Its $131,500 price gets you a tech-heavy sedan with Merc’s latest 'MBUX' system housed in a visually impressive, if perhaps unnecessary, 'Superscreen' dash.

The dual-screen set-up incorporates a main 14.4-inch central multimedia touchscreen and a 12.3-inch display for the passenger, allowing the driver to keep, for example, a map visible while a passenger sorts out media or comfort settings.

The system is also designed to avoid taking users through sub-menus, though can be bypassed by wireless Android Auto or Apple CarPlay.

It also features a selfie camera mounted to the dash, which is disabled for the Australian market at present. Mercedes-Benz Australia hopes to change this soon.

Mercedes also plans to allow the MBUX system to learn what settings and functions will be most useful to the driver under certain conditions, but currently users are able to manually create so-called ‘Routines’ such as setting the climate control and seats to warm up if it’s below a certain temperature, and can even adjust the ambient lighting to a warmer colour.

More automation comes in the brand’s MBUX ‘Hey Mercedes’ system, which can now respond to commands without the driver needing to say “Hey Mercedes”. 

Heated and vented front seats, leather upholstery, wireless phone charging, and a 17-speaker Burmester sound system with Dolby Atmos 4D sound are also standard - the latter being a clever feature that positions different elements of the audio, usually music, to give a 360-degree feeling, as well as turning bassier tones into a physical vibration via “tactile transducers” in each front seat’s backrest. Good for bassline junkies, then (apologies to Mr. Rascal).

With the $9400 'Plus Package', the E-Class also comes with 'Airmatic' suspension and rear-axle steering (which I’ll touch more on later), power-closing doors, 'Urban Guard' to monitor your vehicle while it’s parked, an illuminated grille up front, a more capable version of the MBUX 'Interior Assistant', four-zone climate control and Mercedes’ 'Digital Light' function, which uses the more-than one-million pixels in the headlights to project onto the road or surface in front of you when turning the car off or in driving situations to alert road users of potential danger.

A $6200 'Energising Package' adds multicontour front seats with comfort headrests, upgraded climate controls with 'Air-Balance' and fragrances, upgraded seat heating with armrest heating for the front occupants and heated seats for the rear.

The Tiggo 9 Super Hybrid has three electric motors (two at the front and one at the rear), plus a 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine. The combined output is a whopping 315kW and 580Nm.

A dedicated hybrid transmission sends drive to all four wheels. 

This lone E-Class variant is powered by a turbocharged 2.0-litre engine pumping out 190kW and 400Nm, assisted by a 48-volt battery system. Under EQ boost, an extra 17kW and 205Nm is available for a short time.

It’s hooked up to a nine-speed auto that drives the rear wheels, and it’s all pretty traditional… for 2024, that is.

Mercedes says the E300 is able to hit 100km/h in a respectable 6.3 seconds.

The Tiggo 9 Super Hybrid is a plug-in hybrid. There’s a fuel tank for petrol (95 RON minimum) and a charging flap for you to fill up the 34kWh battery.

Super hybrids are so-called because of their relatively big batteries and longer ranges. Chery says on a full 70-litre tank and charged battery the Tiggo 9 Super Hybrid has a range of 1250km (NEDC). The WLPT range isn’t given but while it will still be impressive it would be less than the NEDC. The same goes for the electric-only range of 170km (NEDC).

If you keep the battery charged, fuel consumption is outstanding. In our short time with the car the trip computer was reporting an average 1.4L/100km, which is exactly the manufacturer's claim.

I noticed that once battery charge fell below 20 per cent the fuel economy worsened to 7.1L/100km.

The battery has a 71kW DC charging capacity however and will fill up fast.  But you will have to top up frequently to get the good fuel economy.   

Mercedes claims the E-Class drinks 7.2L/100km on the combined cycle, and though we weren’t able to test that properly at the pump on the launch program, the trip computer showed up to 9.4L/100km after some quite spirited driving, which gradually averaged out to about 8.6L/100km in the afternoon once some more calm, E-Class-appropriate distance had been covered.

With its 50L fuel tank, the E-Class should theoretically be able to cover 694km on a single tank if the 7.2L/100km is achieved, though realistically it would be much less, 550-600km depending on driving style.

The Chery Tiggo 9 Super Hybrid drives silently and smoothly with strong acceleration just like an electric car for the most part while in the city at lower speeds.

Hills and higher speeds call on the engine to help but even then the transition is almost imperceptible. 

A comfortable ride with well set up suspension, light and accurate steering make for an impressive and effortless driving experience.

There are downsides, like the brake pedal feel. As in many hybrids there’s a ‘wooden’ sensation and I felt I needed to depress the brake pedal harder and longer to pull up at times. This is a heavy vehicle at 2200kg and brake response could be better.

The active safety tech is also intrusive, as is the case with so many cars these days, but the alerts and warnings can be turned off. 

While the E-Class has taken fairly sizeable steps in terms of its tech, it remains a fairly traditional car from behind the wheel, save for a few small changes like its mild-hybrid system and rear-wheel steering.

It’s still a petrol-powered rear-drive sedan, and it feels built more for eating up highway kilometres than it does tackling twisty turns. But that’s okay, because it will still do the latter.

Comfort is the main focus, clearly, for the E300, and the big Merc does it well. We weren’t offered a car without Airmatic air suspension on the launch, but the E-Class doesn’t seem like it would be particularly rough without it.

With it, however, large bumps and minor road annoyances only make their way into the cabin in the sense that you’re aware of them, but not bothered by them.

That slight dulling of feedback does extend to the steering wheel however, where, despite the rear-wheel steering making the car more nimble, the feedback to the driver is less encouraging of eager driving. 

While 190kW on paper doesn’t seem like enough, the E-Class makes do with its meagre engine quite well - and even though it can seem like it’s working a bit too hard at times, the E-Class’ natural state isn’t responding to a planted foot, so it’s unlikely to be a daily bother.

Engine noise, as well as wind and road noise are suitably dulled by the E300’s NVH fitout, too.

The tuning of its drive modes, in particular Comfort and Sport, seemed well-judged on our drive loop, with the option to set the 'Individual' mode to a custom configuration, most elements in Comfort while the drivetrain is set to Sport is particularly helpful when on gentle, high-speed country roads.

If you do start to approach the limits of the big sedan’s capability, it’ll let you know fairly early on. The heavy E-Class isn’t prone to sudden lurching or poor handling, and isn’t much phased by mid-corner bumps.

It’s not as dynamically engaging as some rivals, particularly the 5 Series, but it does appear to be a better provider of cross-country comfort.

ANCAP hasn’t had a go at crash-testing the E-Class yet, and it might not given the relatively small number that will be sold here compared to volume models, but Mercedes’ track record with safety is pretty stellar, and it’s extremely rare for a Mercedes to not cop the maximum five stars.

In the new E300 there are 11 airbags - plenty for a sedan. Mercedes lists front airbags, knee bags and pelvic/thorax airbags for the driver and front passenger, side bags for the rear and a front centre airbag.

It also comes with a fairly extensive suite of safety tech, including the usual ABS, lane-keep assist, blind spot monitoring and surround-view parking cameras.

But on top of that, there’s also ‘Evasive Steering Assist’, semi-automated cruise control with sign recognition, distance assist for following leading vehicles and can even project light arrows onto the road if leaving your lane, when 'Digital Lights' are optioned.

The E-Class also has a function if an imminent collision is detected in which it can, depending on the type of collision, take occupant protection measures. In the case of a side-on collision, the E-Class can “move an affected front occupant towards the centre of the car” before impact.

The Chery Tiggo 9 Super Hybrid is covered by a seven-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty, while the battery has an eight-year unlimited-kilometre warranty.

There’s also roadside assistance and capped price servicing for seven years at $3174, or an average of $453 per year.

Chery's national dealer network consists of 86 sites, including 21 in Melbourne, 20 in Sydney and 12 in Brisbane.

The E-Class comes with Mercedes’ fairly industry standard five-year, unlimited kilometre warranty, though Mercedes-Benz Australia was unable to confirm exact servicing pricing on the launch. 

It does however list pricing for the E-Class on its website for a three-service pack at $3325, four at $4535, and five at $6800, the latter averaging out to $1360 each.

This could increase with the new generation car, and Mercedes doesn’t list estimated serving pricing for new E-Classes yet in its booking system (I checked with one of the test cars).

Servicing intervals are every 12 months or 25,000km, whichever comes first.