GWM Haval Jolion Hybrid 2024 review: Ultra | Long-term small SUV test of Toyota Corolla Cross rival
You know that feeling you get when you buy the cheap version of something you’re looking for a great deal but in the weeks and months after you get it home you start to realize you really should have just splashed out for the big brand name version of that same
Thing well the haval jolon is one of those things that seems like a great deal on paper but in the weeks and months after you get it home will you regret your decision should you just have bought a Hybrid Toyota Cor across or a Hyundai Kona HV instead well I’ve
Spent a little over 3 months and a little over 2,000 K with this one here to find out this version of the haval jolon the topspec ultra hybrid wears a price tag of $49.90 and that’s driveway which means it’s effectively the same price as the most basic versions of the Toyota
Corolla cross hybrid or the brand new Hyundai Kona hybrid once you add those on roads to the equation also it’s important to note that our haval here is a true plugless hybrid that means it has an electric motor which is big enough to actually drive the wheels unlike a mild
Hybrid and it’s also not a plug-in hybrid so you don’t need to worry about charging it to get the fuel saving benefit because you’re getting a topspec car at the price of an entry level rival the list of standard equipment is also excellent for example our jolon Ultra
Gets LED headlights 18-in alloy wheels keyless entry and push start ignition synthetic leather interior trim with an electrically adjustable driver’s seat as well as heating for the front two positions a 12.3 in multimedia touchscreen with wired Apple carplay and Android auto connectivity Dual Zone climate control a 7-in digital
Instrument panel a wireless phone charger and a panoramic opening sunroof the synthetic leather interior trim in the sunroof are particularly impressive at this price while many rivals are offering fabric trims smaller wheels and a less robust digital offering yes it’s a great list of Kit and I’m going to walk you through some
Of my favorite features and some of my least favorite features that I found in my time with this car shortly but first let’s talk design because I think while Chinese cars have been accus to being derivative or even ugly in the past I think the current batch have gone a long
Way to establish their own design languages and the jolon is a great example of this for a start the jolon is in a real goldilock Zone when it comes to its sizing it’s slightly bigger than many of its more direct price Rivals like that Corolla Cross or Hundai Kona
Instead it punches into a size bracket above to compete with cars like the niss kashai and Mitsubishi Eclipse cross this means it looks a bit more substantial on the road and it backs it with a quite contemporary style I like its Square side profile and contoured Bonnet and I
Like its eyeg grabbing Chrome tinged face with a very unique LED light profile to keep it interesting at night but it’s not without its flaws while I think the shape is still quite good around the rear there’s just way too much going on in terms of badge work
This might work in other markets but here in Australia the general consensus is less badge work says more about the car the same goes for the inside which has some great elements and some less impressive ones there’s bits of the design in here which I love and other
Bits that I don’t I quite like the minimalist sort of Terrace Dash layout that’s clad in its own share of soft touch materials and I quite like the textures that run their way through here as well just to keep things interesting and the Chrome touches they do their own
Part to lift the cabin Ambience quite a bit let’s be honest here though the synthetic leather Trim in this haval is not convincing anyone it is very viny and I don’t love the haval badge work on the seats either but one thing I will say is because it’s so padded in here it
Is quite comfortable even over longer distances the digital bits are quite nice too you’ve got a instrument cluster in here which is quite customizable and you’ve got this rather large multimedia touch screen as well it is just a shame that you do have to adjust pretty much everything through the touchcreen there
Are a couple of shortcut buttons here uh for your climate controls and things like that but you do have to control fan speed temperature things like that through the touchcreen only and the the same goes for volume there are no dials for that either so you have to swipe out
A tray to the side and then use your volume controls on the touch screen it’s a very distracting experience while you’re trying to drive the car I was also not such a fan of the rotary shifter which doesn’t lock into its three available places and instead
Rotates freely it means you have to be really Vigilant about which gear you have selected now aside from those software jumbles which are pretty annoying and they have gotten on my nerves on my time with the car the front of the cabin here is actually really practical space in the door there’s a
Huge pocket with plenty of room for our cars guide bottle and there’s a further two in this little flip out sort of armrest console piece as well they’re of different sizes and they’re fixed which is pretty weird because the small one doesn’t really fit much but aside from
That it’s nice to have them there anyway the center console is a really brilliant piece of design because it’s thought of things in a very different way there’s a couple of slots and they’re sized kind of perfectly for the sorts of objects that you’re going to take with you in
Your car you’ve got this one here which is perfect for a phone you can pop it there and there’s this brilliant little bit of design with this cable managed uh hole to send your Apple carplay cable through and hide it away down there and it’s just one of those little areas
Where you can tell Chinese car company sort of think of these things as Tech products more than anything else there’s also a little slot here next to that which is perfect for magnetic cards good if you’ve got a parking garage card or something like that and then there’s a
Large slot here which is perfect for wallets Keys you name it and of course you’ve got your wireless charger under there too it’s got a nice rubber surface so your phone won’t exit when you go to corner and the other area where it’s really brilliant is this big storage
Area under here my partner likes putting a handbag under there stuff like that I can fit a book down there and that’s where your cables go as well so really tidy almost like an EV it’s it’s clever I like it the back seat of the jolon might be its best attribute just
Generally everyone I’ve had back here has been so impressed with the amount of room they have and the feel of the car and they get shocked when I tell them that it’s an affordable Chinese hybrid behind my own driving position there I’m 182 cm tall you can see how much room I
Have it’s it’s enormous I wouldn’t expect most midsize SUVs to have that much room let alone something in the smaller SUV bracket there’s also a perfectly flat floor it’s almost like an EV back here and that means you’ve always got somewhere to put your feet
And if you put an adult in this Center position they’ve got somewhere to put their feet too so it does really up the practicality back here quite a bit now in terms of storage we’ve got a few things so we’ve got a large pocket in the door here plenty of room for our
Car’s guide bottle and if we pull down our little armrest here we’ve got two more with variable edges as well so you’re not going to lose anything out of there clever touch it’s also nicely padded the seats back here are quite nicely padded too just the same as the
Front nice and comfortable over long trips in terms of amenities you’ve got two adjustable air vents back there and you’ve got two USB ports with a little flip open covers so you’re not going to get sand and stuff stuck in there one area where the hybrid jolon specifically
Is isn’t as good is its boot capacity while combustion versions have quite a large boot area the hybrid drops by a significant 40 L to just 390 L this is a little below par of the segment it’s a nice wide space but it’s not very tall
So to fit the full cars guide luggage set we had to remove the parcel shelf even then the medium case would have had an impact on your rear visibility now under this fairly non-descript cladding down here there’s a 1.5 L 4 cylinder engine running the ainson cycle which is
More efficient but less power powerful and there’s a big electric motor in there as well it’s bigger than most hybrids see the power figures for the engine the motor and the combined power figures on your screen now the jolon drives the front wheels via a Hybrid transaxle the way it works means there
Are certain speeds where it drives fully electrically some speeds where power is Blended and some speeds where it will only use the combustion engine but all you need to know is that it basically feels like driving a continuously variable automatic and it’s so slick it’s impossible to tell when it’s
Switching between those power sources which can’t be said for every hybrid now I bet what you really want to know is whether any of the stuff going on under here is actually going to save you any fuel well if you grabbed a SUV like this
With a 2 L engine you’d expect to see something like 7 and 1/2 or 8 L to 100 km but here I’ve landed straight on the jol On’s claim of 5 L to 100 km and that’s very good as an added bonus the jolon can run on entry level 91 unlet
Fuel and because it has a pretty large fuel tank you can theoretically travel about 11,00 km per tank in fact after I picked this car up I didn’t even refuel it until the light came on and it showed one bar of fuel left at which point the
Trip computer had told me i’ traveled over 900 km next up let’s talk about how the jolon feels from behind the wheel okay so the first thing you need to know about the jolon hybrid is that it’s the best version of the jolon and that’s down to this hybrid system and its
Clever Hybrid transaxle gearbox which replaces the clunky s-speed dual clutch that appears in other versions of this car this hybrid system is so good because it’s so smooth especially when you’re going to take off that strong Electric Motor Works really nicely to keep the drive experience nice and
Effortless you just put your foot on the accelerator and off you go you don’t have to worry about the clunky nature of one of those cheap dual clutch gearboxes getting in the way so yes it’s got a funky sort of Hybrid transaxle that’s quite complicated a little bit difficult
To explain but all you need to know is it basically Works in a very similar way to Toyota’s hybrid Synergy drive so if you’ve driven a Toyota hybrid before the drive experience here is very similar for a driver it essentially behaves like a continuously variable automatic it’s really effortless there’s no perceivable
Gear changes and importantly you can’t tell when it switches between the electric motor and the combustion engine it just does it automatically and completely free of any clunking through the drivetrain so it’s really lovely it’s really smooth to drive and as as I said it makes it the best version of the
Jolon on the road so what about other elements of the drive experience well you’ve got quite direct steering here which keeps this car feeling quite good in the corners although it is a little doughy at low speeds and this became most evident when we put this car in a
Comparison against the Hyundai Kut the Kona was just all round more refined more polished when it came to things like the steering and the pedal feel as well which in this car is also a little bit doughy and distant it’s not as though the brakes don’t work it’s they
Have kind of a funny feel when they blend the regen braking and the actual physical discs actually because this car has quite a powerful electric motor it’s also got a little bit of a quirk in that you can use a single pedal driving mode just like in an EV it doesn’t quite feel
Like an EV and the deceleration for that single pedal mode is a little bit sort of inconsistent like it is in electric gwm products but it’s interesting that it has it the other thing you should know is that the performance on offer here isn’t quite what the combined
Figure from this hybrid setup suggests yes it’s fine off the line and it’s got a little bit of straight line performance which is nice and smooth because of that electric motor but it’s not quite the same turbocharge fun you might have in a combustion rival Now Chinese cars in the past haven’t exactly
Been known for their fantastic ride and handling but I think the jolon goes a long way to correcting that nice long wheelbase in this car and the halfway decent tires that it ships on means that it’s actually quite a bit of fun to throw into corners and it handles itself
Pretty admirably as well it’s no performance star and as we’ve already mentioned the Hyundai Kona was quite a bit better when we compared it in those back-to-back tests especially when it came to its ride and its handling but that having been said this is a big step
Forward for Chinese cars generally and I don’t think you’re going to be hugely disappointed by what’s on offer here especially since it’s not that far behind its more established Rivals and the same Rings true for the ride and refinement the ride and the jolon is actually pretty good and I’ve got to say
This hybrid version has the best ride of all the jol on I’ve tested you do get a multi-link setup in the sportier S version which can be had for roughly the same money as this car but even though this one’s got a torsion beam it’s sort
Of more softly sprung than the S so it’s quite a bit more comfortable over bumps but the ride isn’t Magic it does feel a little bit Hollow and a little bit bouncy and it can occasionally have some moments where it’s not as composed as it should be like it’ll skip over
Corrugations that’s because the car’s quite light and honestly it’s a pretty minor complaint on the whole I’m pretty impressed with the ride quality that’s on offer here refinement is not bad either especially if you’re driving around town it’s pretty quiet here in the cabin and it helps that you’ve got
That hybrid setup so there’s not as much engine noise entering but you really only do get a bit more wind noise and a bit more tie noise when you are at those freeway speed so this car really is at its best when you’re around town so if
You’re a ke driver and you’re thinking of adding one of these to your driveway will you’d be disappointed by the way it drives I’d say no you’ll actually be quite impressed because this car actually handles itself really well especially compared to its Rivals yes it’s not quite as polished yes it
Doesn’t quite handle or steer just as well but it’s not by a huge margin like I’ve experienced on some Chinese cars before it’s getting really close and I think those big mainstream players they should be worried safety kit is an interesting story because yes you get
The full set of stuff here in the top spec jolon including key things like Auto emergency braking land keep Tech and blind spot monitoring but there’s more to the story now we all know it’s all well and good to tick a bunch of safety boxes but these days with these
Systems that can quite heavily interfere with the drive experience you need to calibrate them quite well and it’s something that Chinese cars haven’t been particularly good at in the past here in the jolon though most of its systems are pretty lowkey there is one system that I
Really don’t like it’s the Lan keep assist software it’s on every time you start the car and you do have to go through a rigar roll of turning it off through the touchcreen the reason that I don’t like this system is because when you’re on a multi-lane Expressway or a
Freeway it will occasionally just grab the steering wheel out of your hands and quite violently overcorrect it back into the lane it’s not as bad as some systems I’ve used but it’s not great either one thing I do like about the jolon specifically though is you can permanently turn off the driver
Monitoring system in this car now in lesser versions of the jolon that I’ve driven you’re actually unable to permanently turn this system off and it is really invasive and you do have to then go through the rigar roll of turning it off through the touchcreen
Several menus deep as well so I’m glad I can permanently turn it off in this version of this car so one thing I really do like about the jolon is it’s quite easy to park and it’s not because the visibility is particularly good out the back in fact it isn’t it’s got quite
A small aperture for that rear window but it’s got an excellent 360° reversing camera which makes it so easy to position it’s one of the best reversing cameras I’ve actually used and props to haval for putting it in such an affordable car I was also not a fan of this car’s
Adaptive cruise control which aggressively slows the car down for Corners as I couldn’t find a way to turn this particular Quirk off I ended up not really using the cruise control at all elsewhere the jolon maintains a maximum five-star an cap safety rating to the 2019 standards offering an array of seven
Airbags like other upstart automakers haval is offering a quite long warranty 7 years and unlimited kilometers with this car and during that time you get 5 years of roadside assist and a 5year cat price servicing program as well servicing works out to about $330 perom for those 5 years which isn’t quite
Toyota cheap but it’s pretty close it’s also more affordable than the Hyundai Kona hybrid so after my months with the haval jolon ultra hybrid do I think you’ll regret your decision buying one of these over one of its very good Rivals well I think honestly you really
Won’t because in the smaller areas where this car falls behind and doesn’t quite have the Polish of those Rivals it more than makes up for with its great price Great Value it’s super efficient and it’s massive on the inside too in fact I think polish is really the only thing
That’s missing here the haval jolon hybrid is that moment where this brand will start to be taken seriously against its more mainstream Rivals
The 2024 GWM Haval Jolion Hybrid is looking to make its presence felt in the Small SUV segment, which now has no shortage of hybrid models on offer — look no further than the Toyota Corolla Cross, Hyundai Kona and Kia Niro for proof of that fact. Point being, the competition is stiff.
But does the Jolion Hybrid stand out from the crowd? Well, its styling certainly goes some way in helping it do just that. But, of course, there’s a lot more to this Haval’s story than how it looks. Under the bonnet, it has a punchy series-parallel hybrid powertrain that’s hoping to deliver performance and efficiency in equal measure.
In this expert long-term review, CarsGuide Senior Journalist Tom White lives with the Jolion Hybrid’s Ultra flagship for three months to find out just how well it deals with the trials and tribulations of everyday life. That’s right; a hybrid small SUV has to deliver more than just electric grunt and low emissions.
#GWM #Haval #Jolion #Review
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Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
00:33 Pricing and features
01:47 Design
04:23 Practicality
07:21 Under the bonnet
08:01 Efficiency
08:45 Driving
13:32 Safety
15:41 Ownership
16:05 Verdict
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Read Tom’s full review: https://bit.ly/496mTbR
Check out our GWM Haval Jolion hub: https://bit.ly/48368yv
Find more SUVs: https://bit.ly/3QVs1X1
Visit our EVGuide: https://bit.ly/3UHO9GT
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