It’s worth noting that our car didn’t have the latest MG Pilot Custom user-configurable ADAS setting of other MG models, which makes it all considerably easier. The 2026-model-year HSs, coming soon, will get this. Which leaves the Tiggo 9’s ADAS features and, frankly, they are a mess.
Leaving them active makes it bleep and bong at you in four different ways (for lane departure, speeding warning, speed limit change and driver monitoring alert) – and enough, at times, to leave you feeling totally bombarded. Really? You’re worried I might be distracted? How strange.
To prevent it all requires a multi-layered dive into the car’s infotainment system (Chery’s shortcut menu gives access to one of only four systems you’ll want to disable) – and it is a process I timed taking about 40 seconds in all, during which your attention needs to be pretty singularly focused on the infotainment system.
It’s not something to do while you’re driving, needless to say. In the Skoda, achieving the same thing takes less than five seconds and, thanks to the physical buttons, you can manage it while only glancing down from the road.
The final reckoning
Autocar group tests typically concern themselves with more exciting, appetite-whetting things than how often new cars tend to alert and irritate you, and how easy it is to prevent them from doing so. But this is a test of everyday-use family cars in 2026, when good ADAS integration, in this tester’s view, probably makes the decisive difference on how drivable so many new cars actually are. Let’s consider the territory in which we find ourselves.
Right now, car manufacturers are fitting lane keeping, speed limit reminding and driver monitoring systems that they know most users don’t want, because they are legally required to. Both the Skoda and Cupra seem built by brands that understand the truth of where we are, as defined in those terms. Mercedes too – although perhaps not quite so instinctively. As for MG and Chery, the first is catching on, albeit slowly, but the second still has an awful lot of learning to do.
The Tiggo 9’s is a crop of ADAS features so persistently intrusive and inaccessible to disable that I wouldn’t choose to live with them even for 800 horsepower and 150 miles of electric range. The Chery avoids the ignominy of last place, however, because there’s a car that costs 50% more than it, and that fails to match it in so many meaningful ways (efficiency, electric range, performance, refinement).
By
