‘This market is very important’: Chery earmarks local development programs and variants as it stresses the importance of Australia as a ‘frontier’ market for the world

Chinese upstart Chery will begin to focus on local development programs, according to its head of global engineering David Lu.

“Local tuning is a must. Every market we go to and have some scale there, we’ll do local tuning. When I was in Europe, we did a lot of local market tuning. We will bring that here. No question about it," said Lu.

“I think we’ll even do a little bit more. Go beyond. Do some special versions. Australia is a good market for this.”

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Lu said that the brand sees Australia as a launchpad for elsewhere in the world.

“Australia is a good market. It can be a frontier to the USA market, so we’ll see how we can leverage that. One of my purposes for being here is seeing how we can work with the people here [on tuning the cars].”

He agreed that Australia was particularly important for the tuning and development of Chery’s 4WD programs outside of China. This is something local Chief Operating Officer Lucas Harris said was underway for an upcoming dual-cab ute, with Chery sending out multiple staff members from its global research and development team to develop the model to be up to the standards demanded by Australian conditions.

“That’s another thing we need to launch, a 4x4 very soon” Lu said.

2026 Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid (image credit: Tom White)

“Which brand? We will see. 4x4 vehicles? This market is very important for that.”

Harris added the Australian division was receiving a “huge” amount of support from the global research and development department.

“For the last three years they’ve been here consistently over that time working on various models and various programs,” he said.

Lu said Chery was “still learning a lot of things” in Australia.

2026 Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid (image credit: Tom White)

“We want to do more hardware and local mountain testing here. We want to and will be doing more later,” said Lu.

Whether this will extend as far as having a specific set of hardware just for Australia, similar to the set-ups used by Kia, Mitsubishi, and GWM in recent years, remains to be seen.

Chery is experiencing a phase of explosive growth in Australia up 228.8 per cent to the end of the first half of 2025.

Its affordable Tiggo 7 and Tiggo 8 mid-size SUVs, as well as the Tiggo 4 small SUV have all proven to be sales hits. With the arrival of the plug-in hybrid Tiggo 7 and 8, plus the Tiggo 9 large SUV due before the end of 2025, the brand is confident it will continue on this trajectory.

2026 Chery Rely R8

Harris said even though everybody says he should be pleased with the brand’s progress, he said there’s still so much the brand could be doing in Australia.

“Actually I think there’s a lot more headroom and a lot more opportunity on the table than what we’re dealing with at the moment.” He said.

Chery’s dual cab ute offering, yet another challenger to one of Australia’s most popular new car segments, is due in the second half of next year, with Harris promising it will be like nothing we’ve seen before. A unique diesel-hybrid drivetrain option has been earmarked for the model, and could be the first of its kind to hit the market.