From Singapore to Thailand on One Tank with the Jaecoo J7 PHEV

On paper, the Jaecoo J7 PHEV can cover up to 1,200 kilometres on a full tank of fuel, and a full charge on its 18.3 kWh battery. But talk is cheap, and anyone can claim their car is able to cover vast distances without having to refuel.

The proof in the pudding, is in the eating. And the proof in an ultra-efficient car, is an equally impressive long drive up North on a single tank to see if it’d do it. Which is exactly what Jaecoo set out to do with our recent Singapore to Thailand drive.

There’s method to this madness though. This isn’t the first time that such a challenge has been undertaken – they’ve done this before across China. But the ambient temperatures in a temperate climate is very different to ours. Can the results be replicated in South East Asia? There’s really only one way to find out.

From Ubi to Hat Yai

We started off the morning bright and early on a Tuesday. A total of five J7 PHEVs will embark on this 1,000+ kilometre drive to Thailand. Three bore Malaysian plates, with cars four and five drawn from local dealer Vertex’s inventory.

The idea was simple – we were to drive the cars normally and at legal highway speeds. As much as possible, the Jaecoo teams ensured the cars were equal, even going as far as usually professional calibration equipment to set each cars’ tyre pressures.

A total of ten drivers will take part in this challenge. We’d all be grouped in pairs, and I ended up with Eston, a name you’d probably associate more with adventures of the culinary kind.

Eston has actually never driven into Malaysia before, so it was going to be a tall order for him to be competitive amidst a field of veteran automotive journalists. We’d be banking then, on all of my previous experiences with road trips and efficiency challenges.

But we immediately agreed that we’d try and be competitive, within reason. We decided to keep the airconditioning running at all times, even activating the ventilated seats later on on the very first day. Afterall, optimal driver performance comes from comfort, right?

We set off from the Vertex showroom in Ubi, with our GPS directing the convoy to Tuas Checkpoint. In the J7’s ‘Smart’ driving mode, it was able to operate as a fully electric vehicle at Singapore’s expressway speeds. In fact, it wasn’t until after we crossed the border that its 1.5 litre engine actually kicked in.

Our first stop of the trip was in Johor, at a place called The Veil in Puteri Harbour, for a spot of lunch. The restaurant definitely felt very Japanese in its execution, from its decor down to the dishes they served us.

Lunch over, we were back on the road. We were bound for our overnight halt – first of three for this trip, in Kuala Lumpur. Where traffic permitted, we’d be doing the legal speed limit of the NSHW – 110 km/h. And even so, the car toggled between its ICE and EV powertrains so efficiently that it was only when we crossed the border into Malacca that the battery really ran out.

Right before we descended on the chaos that is evening rush hour KL, we made a slight detour to Bandar Malaysia for a photo op. Jaecoo had us line up the five cars against the backdrop of the KL skyline. With that done, it was time to make the short trek over to Mandarin Oriental KL, and hit the hay.

We set off bright and early on Day 2. The end point for this day is Penang, and most of the driving was to be done on the highway. Each team had their own strategy for the rest of the drive. Ours? Well, we figured that drivetrain losses were going to be more significant than power losses through the electric motor. We decided to try something radical – to prioritise charging as much as possible, whilst also working out the optimal road speed for the lowest consumption.

This resulted in us running the car in “Forced Charge mode“, and the lowest fuel consumption figures were achieved running at between 105 – 110 km/h. Which was the speed we decided to drive at.

This gave us sufficient electrical charge to do all of our driving off the NSHW towards our lunchstop in Ipoh purely on electric mode. Here, we caught up with our peers, trying to work out how each car was doing. Some of their strategies were rather…I’m settling for the word ‘unusual’, and we knew we’d not be in the running for the overall victory.

Still, we were at least hoping that we’d still be able to make the podium. We continued in this mode, only toggling to “Smart” with the battery hit its max charge cap of 80%. This toggling back and forth lasted all the way to Penang, and resulted in our lowest sustained overall economy of the trip – about 1.8L/100km.

In Penang, we did the same thing as in Ipoh, driving through the evening rush hour chaos as a fully-electric vehicle. The stop-start nature really took a toll on the pack – we had 80% at the toll booth off the NSHW, but only about 26% when we reached our second hotel for this drive, The Edison Penang.

We started the last driving day with an indicated 500 kilometres of range. Feeling good, we decided to let the car do its thing – only this time we’d introduce another economy driving trick from our arsenal. We paid great care in figuring out the changes in terrain, letting the car freewheel on steep declines to build maximum speed to climb back up again.

This became very effective when we crossed into Thailand – more on that later. For now, we stopped at our last Malaysian stop of the trip – Mansion 28 at Alor Setar, for our lunch. With that done, the Thai border was just a quick 40 or so minutes away.

Once we cleared the border, the remaining drive to Hat Yai went relatively smoothly. The roads here were riddled with elevation changes, so it was the perfect scenario to allow us to practice a spot of momentum driving.

We’d leave a gap to the car ahead of us, lifting off the throttle right before we reached the crest of each hill. We’d then let gravity do the heavy lifting, only nudging the accelerator ever so slightly just to make it up the next hill. And we’d do this over and over again, until we reached the finish line, at Laguna Grand Hotel and Spa in Hat Yai.

Still, despite all our efforts, we came in last. But I’m still immensely proud of our effort. For starters, this was my co-driver’s very first time taking part in a media drive. And an efficiency challenge across 1,000 kilometres and three countries is essentially throwing him into the deep end and expecting him to not just swim, but thrive.

And he did exceptionally well – so if you are reading this Eston, I thank you for being great company and for being a great sport. Keep in mind also that we were the only team to have all of the comfort features active, 100% of the time, from when we left Ubi to when we arrived at Laguna Grand Hotel and Spa. And we STILL reached the end point with plenty of range to spare.

Don’t think Jaecoo achieved this by simply shoving a massive fuel tank in the J7 either – it has a modest 60 litre tank, which means it returned an average overall economy for us, driven in real-world conditions, of 21km/l. Our Singaporean colleagues won the challenge overall, with an efficiency rating of almost 24km/l!

And this was through some torrential rain, whilst averaging Malaysian highway speeds, in total comfort. I knew the J7 PHEV was a good car, but I didn’t know just how capable it was. So if you are in the market for an ultra-efficient and ultra-capable daily driver, the J7 PHEV should seriously be a car to shortlist. If it’s good enough for the 1,000 km trek to Thailand, it is good enough for you to drive through Singapore’s busiest streets!