GWM Hybrid Range

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.

There could be any number of reasons for this from an electrical or a mechanical point of view. Since the car is under warranty, why not tackle your Haval dealership with the problem as, legally, it’s their responsibility to put right.

But on another level, are you sure the vehicle is not using its electric motor to help power the vehicle? The transition between petrol, electric and a combination of the two can be pretty hard to pick sometimes, especially in newer vehicles with smoother engines and better sound-proofing. In fact, the Jolion Hybrid has been praised in road tests for the seamless way it transitions between petrol and electric power, so maybe because you’re not feeling or hearing this transition, it appears to be not happening, even when it is.