Sorting ADAS for Omoda 5 is just a start … experts in Australia have been signed up to effect a dynamic fine-tune for all Chery cars is coming here.

KIWI customers for new entrant Chinese brand Omoda will immediately benefit from the brand’s programme to fine-tune suspension settings and recalibrate advanced driving systems (ADAS) to better suit regional tastes.

The sports utility and crossover specialist has had a team of local and Chinese engineers in Australia reworking its first model on sale here, the Omoda 5.

That effort came together after the car ruffled some feathers from a safety perspective when it introduced across the Tasman last year. 

New Zealand and Australia take the car in a common specification, so immediate task was to address and rectify perceived issues with the electronic assists.

That job has been sorted in time for inclusion into NZ-market stock.

The main bugbear there has been the over-intrusiveness of ADAS. 

Early-delivered Omoda 5s shared with media in Australia drew criticism for having a domestic China tune they felt was overzealous in taking control of the vehicle.

Lane-keep assist would strongly pull on the steering wheel if it detected a driver drifting towards the edge of a lane, regardless of whether the driver was making deliberate inputs to avoid potholes or other obstacles. 

Concerns were held over other aspects, too, particularly an over-sensitive driver attention monitoring system that would sound alarms and display poorly translated messages admonishing the driver for looking anywhere but dead ahead at all times. 

Some cars in the same tune have come to New Zealand, but just for brand use. 

Those arriving for sale, which begins now, are updated, suggests Sheldon Humphries, country manager for Omoda and sister brand Jaecoo.

Speaking at the Omoda 5 media and dealer event in Auckland last night, he says the difference is tangible.

He gave as example his experiences with an early car brought in for internal appraisal and a showroom-set 1.6-litre all-wheel-drive GT, the flagship of the petrol range, he has been driving for several weeks.

“I have done 1500 kilometres in it and there is definitely an improvement on the original vehicles that came through.”

Effort to ensure cars are as best-suited to our part of the world as possible is sincere, he says.

That also extends to how the cars cope with our road surfaces, too.

Omoda/Jaecoo parent Chery has identified Australia as such a key export market for their sports utility and crossover products that factory and local engineers will from now be focussing on a ride-handling programme for all Omodas and the more four-by-four inspired Jaecoos coming to this part of the world.

In doing so, they are following a route now also taken by Kia, on occasion Hyundai and, in the past, Toyota, for Australasian product. 

The conjoined South Korean brands are cited by Humphries as specific rival targets for Omoda, along with Nissan and other already-established China-born marques MG, Great Wall Motor and BYD.

Chery is highly protective of its standing as China’s top passenger car exporter by volume, a status it has held for 21 years and built upon in 2023 when it built 1.8 million cars, of which almost half were shipped overseas, a year-on-year growth of 101 percent.

It has another programme, working to same intent, running out of a technical centre in Frankfurt, Germany, having identified that UK and European buyer tastes are different again.

“We are highly committed to the Australian and New Zealand market,” Humphries said.

“Australia is obviously a larger market and they've got a vast team that side, so we benefit from all the time and investments they make.”

It seems probable the suspension tuning programme will become part of the pre-release preparation for all products destined for our countries.

The rework could be significant, going by the allowances Chery has given its Frankfurt team. They have employed specialists in noise, vibration and harshness, vehicle dynamics and electric vehicle charging.

For Omoda 5 in the UK and Europe, Chery has gone for upsized anti-roll bars and re-engineered the dampers, spring rates and bush rates.

There’s sense the Australian team can also make the same choices, should they decide to. 

That might mean evaluation cars taken there might end up going back to the firm’s base in Wuhu, a coastal city in China. 

The European vehicles are already being shipped back so Chinese engineers can experience the differences. The level of confidence is such that while the initial testing starts in China, the final set-up is now being done and signed off by the Frankfurt team.

Humphries says the decision-making is serious and all about making the cars as well suited to their specific markets as is humanly possible.

The programme in Australia is definitely a big deal.

Currently achieving attention across the Tasman are two more five-seater Omoda crossovers signed off for NZ, the family top dog C9 set to land just before Christmas and a C7 that slips under it but above C5, here in early 2025.

Also in the frame for fine-tuning are the first Jaecoos, the J7 landing in July and a slightly larger J8 following soon after.

All will furnish in petrol and lookalike battery-assisted PHEV formats.

“They are busy in Australia at the moment with suspension tuning and stuff like that,” says Humphries.

“They are obviously working on not only current vehicles but future vehicles as well.”

It’s not just about making the cars feel good. Safety is also at the forefront.

With the ambitious brand’s return coming after almost a decade’s hiatus since Chery came and went, comes the promise that our region will get its own safety input, with research and development with experts to help ensure all models can achieve the five-star ANCAP safety rating already meted Omoda 5.

ADAS is vital to achieving a high score, but there is speculation some brands have begun to favour calibrations more geared toward a favourable ANCAP outcome than genuine collision prevention and mitigation. 

Says Humphries: “I can promise you this, our vehicles will only get better.”