GWM Hybrid Range

A new-car warranty spells out pretty clearly that any skipped services can jeopardise a warranty claim should something go wrong that might have been avoided with the recommended servicing. So I think you’re on pretty shaky ground with this one.

One thing you could do is go beyond the dealership and could contact Haval’s Australian customer service division and plead your case. But technically, a skipped major service on something like a transmission is very likely to be grounds for denying any warranty claim.

The exception might be if the car was recalled to fix an inherent transmission problem or fault. However, I can find no reference to such a recall on your make and model.

I checked with Haval about this and discovered that the 12-volt battery is covered only by a 12-month/20,000km warranty. To be fair, that’s pretty normal, and the advice is to start any car at least every three to four weeks to keep some charge in the 12-volt system.

But the hybrid battery should not be subject to the same conditions, and is designed to be discharged and charged frequently as part of its normal use. Your Haval’s hybrid battery is covered by an eight-year/150,000km warranty, so there should be no problem with it being covered by the factory warranty if, in fact, it’s the cause of your problem.

You need to contact Haval Australia’s customer service department and take this further as a failed hybrid battery on a 2023 car should be Haval’s problem, not yours.

It sounds as though the material the dashboard structure or skin is made from has started to collapse or degrade in some other way. If the structure beneath the vinyl skin of the dashboard fails, you could conceivably wind up with a mis-shapen dash.

While that might sound trivial, it’s important that this gets fixed as this part of the dashboard houses the airbag. And if the opening for the airbag is not the right shape or is compromised somehow, it could affect the correct deployment of the airbag in a crash. And the consequences of that aren’t hard to imagine.