How to beat the petrol pump queue: The Jaecoo J7 SHS

Jaecoo claim a range of 1 200 km on a 50-litre tank of fuel. Picture: Supplied It is at times like these that the NEV adopters of the likes of the Jaecoo J7 SHS are smiling a little more than they usually do when it comes to the ever-rising cost of fossil fuels. The bottom line is that the only way you are going to beat the petrol pump queue is by not being in it.

And that means you either stay at home, or you make use of a vehicle that does not consume fuel. Nobody would have predicted thatDonald Trump‘s ego would mean you having to queue for hours at a petrol station to beat record-high petrol and diesel price increases. And this is while we can still get petrol and diesel down here on the tip of Africa.

Can you imagine what will happen if a peace deal between the United States (US) and Iran is not struck any time soon? It will be absolute chaos for us. The Jaecoo J7 SHS is the first plug-in hybrid for the brand in South Africa, and I got to spend a week testing whether it is as fuel-efficient as they claim.

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The SHS in the name stands for Super Hybrid System. And this means you have a car powered by a conventional internal combustion engine and a high-output electric motor. Under the bonnet sits a turbocharged 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine that produces 105kW of power and 215 Nm of torque.

But you also have a 150kW/310Nm electric motor that provides plenty of immediate punch, and both feed into a shared single-speed Dedicated Hybrid Transmission (DHT). So, whilst theJaecoo J7 SHSmight look a lot like a normal J7, it offers a full 255kW of power and 525Nm of torque. Now, this would normally mean performance at the expense of fuel consumption.

But in this case, it doesn’t. The 0-100 km/h time is brisk at 8.5 seconds, and the top speed is more than enough at an electronically limited 180 km/h. So, you have performance.

But the 18.3-kWh battery housed beneath the floor offers you around 90km of pure electric driving, and this reduces fuel consumption dramatically. Even more so than claimed. Simply put, like in my case, because I don’t travel miles upon miles each day for work, I didn’t use fuel.

So, I could easily do well more than 1200km before I went near a petrol station. All I had to do was make sure the car was charged every night. Just like any normal owner of a plug-in hybrid car would.

My wife, on the other hand, travels around a bit more, and she often finds herself with around 30% of battery left before the end of the day. Then the car would engage the petrol engine to maintain the battery’s charge level. Doing this before putting the car on charge at home at night resulted in a fuel consumption of 7.0 litres per 100km, and a range of around 700km.

So, unfortunately, she would find herself queuing at a petrol station. I also told her to try the ‘Force Charge’ mode. This is where the car uses the engine once again to get the battery charged back up to 80% (or less, depending on what you set the number at) and keep it there.

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