Chery News

It’s EOFY time again!

There are more and more Chinese car brands entering the Australian new car market seemingly every day.

Chinese brand Chery is working on a unique solution for its first Australia-bound ute, and – if successful – it could form a blueprint for the future of models like the Toyota HiLux, Ford Ranger and Isuzu D-Max.

Gone are the days when digital gauge clusters and sweeping panoramic touchscreens were reserved for the owners of prestigious European cars like a Mercedes-Benz S-Class or a BMW 7 Series.

Chinese brand Chery says it has solved the brand's active safety system woes, suggesting new hardware and the expansion of its local ADAS tuning program has delivered a system better suited to Australian drivers and conditions.

Chery has announced pricing and specifications for its 2025 C5, formerly known as the Omoda 5.

Chery Australia has confirmed it’ll introduce plug-in hybrid (PHEV) technology this July with the updated Tiggo 7 and Tiggo 8 SUVs.

Designing cars in the EV era isn’t as simple as it used to be, according to Chery’s Vice President and General Manager of Design, Steve Eum.The Korean-American design veteran and self-described automotive purist worked with some of the biggest names in the car industry, including Ford, General Motors and Hyundai, before joining the burgeoning Chinese firm in 2017.It was the same year Chery released its first electric car, the eQ1, marking a turning point for the brand as it began a fully fledged transition to electrification, carrying with it new design challenges.“Growing up, if you saw the front end of an Aston Martin or a Jaguar, you knew it was an Aston Martin or a Jaguar.”“With these newer energy vehicles, becoming a lot more simpler at the front, more cleaner, of course, but at the same time, you’re losing that identity,” said Eum.As car brands shift their priorities to aerodynamics and energy efficiency, designing a new car to be unique from its rivals has become an increasingly difficult task, said Eum.Take the front grille, for example.Irrespective of its functional purpose of cooling the engine on petrol and diesel cars, since the dawn of the motor car itself, the front grille has been the major identifier for car brands.But the problem for designers in the EV era is that they’re no longer required given there is no longer an engine to cool.In fact, a front grille on an EV can actually stifle aerodynamics, leading to lower energy efficiency that depletes driving range faster.“The grille plays a big part because it is that one piece of detail at the front of the car that really says it is a certain brand next to the badge. Of course, it gives a clear indication – especially from far away – about what vehicle is coming towards you,” said Eum.“As soon as you get rid of the grille, you’ve left this big part out of the visual identity.”The loss of the front grille has also coincided with the trend to adopt rounder body styling (also for aerodynamics), which Eum said has left little in the way of design features to tinker with other than the headlights and tail-lights.“A lot of vehicles are now designed because of regulation, aerodynamics and safety – it’s hard to get away from that.”But, depending on how you look at it, said Eum, the EV transition can either be viewed as a roadblock or an opportunity to experiment with more digital technologies.Hyundai is a prime example of how EV design can be individualised through the use of its LED lights, which incorporate a design technique the brand calls "Parametric Pixels”.As it might sound, Ioniq models use pixelated lights to create digital surfaces, lines and angles, rather than traditional physical styling.Audi is similarly an adopter of these lighting techniques. The LED light signatures on its newer models, such as the Q6 e-tron, are configurable to the driver's preferences and elicit different animations when locking and unlocking the car.BMW has gone a different route, reinstating the grille on some of its EV models but incorporating it as a flat panel that is, in some cases, much larger than on its petrol and diesel cars.The grille on the BMW iX, which is one of the brand’s largest to date, is coated with polyurethane to make it self-repairing from scratches and lined with LED lights to make its branding more conspicuous.According to Eum, it’s these sort of digital identifiers that will define Chery's car design going forward, rather than strictly physical ones.“I think, in the future, whether it be something that’s not so physically direct or so literal in terms of the physical grille, we might start experimenting with more digital aspects, like lighting, transparent lighting, opaque lighting and things of that nature.”“I think that gives more of an identity for the front part of the vehicle that supports the brand as well, and so, that's what we see for the future."

The recent Shanghai and New York motor shows demonstrated the increasing gulf between the surging Chinese car industry and the rest of the world.

If you thought there’s no way Australia could accommodate yet another Chinese brand, then think again. Because it looks like another one is getting ready to launch.One of Chery’s many sub-brands, iCar, is likely to hit Australian shores in the coming years.According to Autocar, iCar will launch in the UK in 2026, however it will be marketed as ‘iCaur’ outside of China given Apple owns the rights to ‘iCar’.Chery Australia is remaining quiet on the iCar brand for now, with a company spokesperson telling CarsGuide: “We’re certainly interested in the exciting product that was revealed at the Shanghai Motor Show. However, at this early stage there are no confirmed plans.”That exciting product is the iCar V23, a small, rugged, electric off-roader that looks like a shrunken Jeep Wrangler.The V23 is already on sale in China and it comes with a choice of three electric powerplants including a 100kW single-motor base grade with a 47.3kWh LFP battery and about 300km of range on the lenient CLTC cycle.Topping the range is a 155kW dual-motor powertrain with an 81.8kWh NMC battery and around 500km of range.Following the boxy V23 in the UK at least will be the larger V25 SUV that comes with a range-extender powertrain including a 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine.Beyond that, Autocar said there is a small SUV in 2027 called the V21 that will be a Jeep Avenger rival, while a large V29 is also on the cards.If iCar comes to Australia it will add to the growing stable of Chery and its sub-brands. Currently the Chinese giant sells the Tiggo range of SUVs (Tiggo 4, 7 Pro and 8 Pro Max) as well as the Omoda 5 small SUV and related E5 EV.The latter two will shortly be spun off under the Omoda sub-brand which sits alongside the more premium Jaecoo brand. Jaecoo offers the J7 medium SUV and will soon add the J8.Chery has had a strong start to 2025 with 6057 sales to the end of March, representing a 217 per cent increase year on year.