Chery News

It’s the year 2032, and half of the top 10 selling car brands in Australia are Chinese. Many of the top 10 from 2022 are nowhere to be seen in there now. Ford’s gone, so is Mitsubishi, Mazda and Subaru. Some traditional brands remain. There’s Toyota, Volkswagen, Nissan, Kia and Hyundai, but newcomers Haval, MG, BYD, Ora and Chery have broken through into the top 10 with affordable, sexy electric vehicles that have won over Aussies.OK, we’re taking a wild stab in the dark here, but this scenario is not outside the realm of possibility.Plus, this future is brought to you by the same writer who predicted in a story published recently that Kanye West would reveal a car only for the rapper to do exactly that three days later. Seriously, the next decade will see a monumental shift in the car brands Australians decide to give their money. The conditions for the change are now perfect.See, while car brand loyalty still very much exists, it doesn’t to the extent that it did when most of us came from either a Holden family or a Ford one. Holden and Ford didn’t adapt fast enough to our changing tastes and almost before we knew it, Australian manufacturing closed up shop.  Toyota’s market-wide and decades-long dominance, the reincarnation of Hyundai and Kia as desirable brands, and the emergence of SUVs as the favourite form of car had presented Australians with other options. Good options.Tesla’s gatecrashing of the auto industry party disrupted buying habits further. Here was the anti-car-company car company. The electric-only brand that made over the EV’s image from geek to beauty, from Toyota Prius to Model S.So, with old loyalty smashed and a public open to new brands from phones to drones, the adoption of Chinese vehicles will be seamless.Some of the names are already familiar to Aussies such as Haval and MG, others like Ora and BYD will become well known soon.At the end of June, 2022 the top 10 brands in Australia from first to tenth are: Toyota; Mazda, Mitsubishi, Kia, Hyundai, Ford, MG, Isuzu Ute, Subaru and Nissan.Chinese brand MG is already a top 10 player, but is it possible for Haval to join it soon?Great Wall Motors (GWM) is the parent company of Haval and its head of marketing Steve Maciver sees a place in the top 10 happening sooner rather than later.“GWM’s recent growth has seen us move ever closer to the top 10 brands. And ultimately, that’s where we see our future,” he said.“With significant development in new product and a growing, professional dealer network, there’s every chance that a top 10 position can be achieved in the coming years.“By 2032? We anticipate being firmly entrenched in the top 10 with a wide model range and multiple electrification options. Australia is a hugely important market for GWM from a global perspective and our local ambition matches this.”By 2032 the uptake of electric vehicles will be much higher than it is today.  Just 1.8 per cent of passenger cars and SUVs sold so far this year were pure electric cars. Sounds tiny but that’s more than three times as many over the same period in 2021.The rate of take up will exponentially increase as more electric car brands come onto the market causing an automotive culture shift. It’s not crazy to say that within 10 years at least thirty percent of new cars sold in Australia will be pure electric.  It makes sense that any brand that wants to be in 2032’s top 10 will have to have a healthy electric vehicle line-up. A lack of electric offerings could be Mazda’s downfall from the top 10. The brand which has long been a top 10 player seems to have pursued better and better combustion engine tech when it could be developing electric vehicles. And so it’s late to the electric party that Hyundai, Kia and Toyota have been at for some time.Nissan’s been investing in reinvigorating its range and shedding its old models for new-generation versions starting with the X-Trail, Pathfinder and Z. Nissan was one of the first brands to bring an electric vehicle to Australia with its Leaf, but it will need to produce more EV models to stay in the 2032 top 10.  GWM is also the parent company of electric-only brand Ora, which is new to Australia and will offer its Funky Cat for about $50,000. But before that, Chinese brand BYD will touch down in August 2022 with its Atto 3 electric SUV priced at $44,990 driveaway.The Atto 3 joins the MG ZS EV with its driveaway price of $46,990 as the cheapest EV in Australia.MG made its top 10 debut in March 2022 and has kept its place thanks to big sales of all three of its models - the MG3, MG ZS and MG HS.Fellow Chinese brand Chery will make another attempt at winning Australians over with the arrival of the Tiggo7 Pro small SUV, the Tiggo8 Pro mid-size SUV, and the Omoda5 EV next year. Toyota has been in the EV game longer than any brand, but chose to sell predominantly hybrids. Then in December last year Toyota pulled back the curtain and revealed it had 30 pure electric vehicles ready to roll out before 2030.Hyundai and Kia ventured into electric waters early and bravely too with sub-brands, Ioniq and EV.  The world’s second largest car maker Volkswagen has yet to launch a fully electric vehicle in Australia but the brand is ready to roll out EVs en masse locally starting with the ID.4 and ID.5 SUVs in 2023, followed by the ID.3 hatch in 2024.Volkswagen Group also owns Audi, Skoda and new-to-Australia Cupra. Recently the group’s managing director Paul Samson made its electric intentions clear.  “Volkswagen Group Australia’s target to become the leader in EVs is by no means ambitious; it is merely realistic,” he said. “The Volkswagen Group’s mission is to be the leading global provider of sustainable and individual mobility. By 2030, 50 per cent of vehicles produced by the Volkswagen Group will be EVs. By 2040 that will be closer to 100 per cent. By that time all of our global production plants will have long since been carbon neutral. Our company will establish a single unified battery format produced at its own purpose built factories. The Volkswagen Group has designated A$115 billion for the development of future technologies by 2025. That comprises some 50 per cent of the company’s total investments.”It’s been asked if a conflict with China could affect the owners of Chinese cars? The answer to that is a conflict with China would affect all owners of all new cars. The shortage in semiconductor chips now causing enormous delays in vehicles across all brands, Chinese or not, has proven this.As for the 2032 top 10, well the beauty and danger of writing a story which will be published on the internet is that it will be here to read in 2032. Time will tell.

Chinese brand Chery is ready to make its move against brands like MG, BYD and Great Wall - as well as the mainstream Japanese and Korean brands - in Australia, with a fleet of evaluation vehicles on route about to the country ahead of the nationwide launc

Episode 235 - EVs we miss out on!

Chinese brand Chery has trademarked its first model for Australia, and it's anything but a cut-price offering.Instead, the brand has registered the Exceed nameplate, reserved for its premium-feeling SUVs, with a host of models that could target everything

Chinese brand Chery could use the just-revealed Jetour TX as a launch halo vehicle in Australia, with the Ford Bronco-aping off-road SUV just revealed in China.The bite-sized but tough-as-nails SUV might look a little familiar, with the massively popular

Chinese brand Chery has detailed a new all-electric model that could be the cheapest new EV yet

Fuel pump fire risk prompts Chery J11 recall

China's automotive invasion appears to have faltered after a strong start.

Cars from China were poised to be the Next Big Thing but sales have tanked. It may go down in automotive history as the Great Fall of China. Despite promising to challenge the big brands when they arrived five years ago, sales of Chinese cars have plummeted as the cost of mainstream cars have limboed to new lows, squeezing out the cut-price competition. Deliveries of Chinese cars have been in freefall for more than 18 months, and the situation is so dire the distributor of Great Wall Motors and Chery vehicles stopped importing cars for at least two months. The Australian distributor says it was "renegotiating" prices with the Chinese car makers but dealers say they haven’t been able to order cars for up to six months. Sales of all Chinese cars have halved so far this year alone; Great Wall Motors sales are down by 54 per cent while Chery deliveries are down by 40 per cent, according to figures supplied by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries. Just 1782 cars from China have been sold in the first five months of this year, down from 3565 for the same period last year. At their peak in 2012, more than 12,100 Chinese cars were sold locally. There are now at least seven Chinese car brands on sale in Australia but Great Wall and Chery are the largest; the others are yet to publish sales figures. A spokesman for Ateco, the distributor of Great Wall Motors, Chery and Foton vehicles from China said there "a range of factors" for the sharp sales slowdown. "Primarily it is to do with currency," said Ateco spokesman Daniel Cotterill. "The massive devaluation of the Japanese Yen in early 2013 has meant that well established Japanese vehicle brands are able to be much more competitively priced in the Australian market than was the case when Great Wall launched here in mid 2009." He said new brands traditionally compete on price, but that price advantage had all but evaporated. "Where once a Great Wall ute might have had six or seven thousand dollars of price advantage over an established Japanese brand, that is not the case at the moment in many instances," said Cotterill. "Currency fluctuations are cyclical and we remain optimistic that our competitive price position will return. In the meantime it is business as usual." The sales downturn comes as Great Wall Motors has a management reshuffle in China after its all-new SUV had to be withdrawn from sales twice because of quality concerns. The Bloomberg news agency reported that the reshuffle comes after the company posted sales declines in five of the past six months. The company also has twice delayed the introduction of its key new model, the Haval H8 SUV. Last month, Great Wall said it will hold off on sales of the vehicle until it is able to make the H8 of a "premium standard." In May Bloomberg reported that Great Wall suspended sales of the H8 after customers reported hearing "knocking noises" in the transmission system. The Haval H8 was supposed to mark a turning point for Great Wall Motors and promised to meet European crash safety standards. A slightly smaller SUV, the Haval H6, was due to be sold in Australia this year but the distributor says its arrival has been delayed by negotiations over currency - not because of any safety concerns. The reputation of Great Wall Motors and Chery vehicles took a hit in Australia in late 2012 when 21,000 Great Wall utes and SUVs and 2250 Chery passenger cars were recalled for having parts containing asbestos. Sales of both brands have been in freefall ever since.

Ateco Automotive, which also imports Chery and Lotus cars, last week announced it had taken over the Australian distribution of Foton Tunland utes from Queensland-based FAA Automotive.Ateco last year took over the local distribution of Chinese-made Foton trucks from TransPacific Industries, which had struggled to sell the cut-price machines at the same dealerships as its Western Star trucks. Ateco spokesman, Daniel Cotterill, says the company was happy to have the Foton ute business although it didn't try to poach it from FAA.  "This development came at the request of Foton (in China)," Cotterill says. "They came to us and said that it is not working for whatever reason, let's do this."Cotterill says Ateco and Foton are still working out the details of the models it will use to re-launch the brand locally in the middle of this year. Working Wheels understands the crew cab version will be a certain starter, although the recently launched single cab may not be in the new line-up. Ateco is also not ready to start discussing prices of the Foton utes, but Cotterill says "we will come back with sharper pricing."Rivals have suggested Foton had initially asked too much for its crew cab ute, launched in 2002 from $28,000 to $35,000, and underestimated the caution with which most Australian customers approach a new brand from China. The Foton utes will not be as cheap as the Great Wall workhorses, which start from $17,990, partly because they use more brand name componentry such as Cummins engines and also because of higher quality levels.Cotterill says Great Wall was not worried that Ateco was taking on another ute brand because the company has already shown it can import rival brands without problems. Ateco will also consider passenger versions of Foton vehicles if they are made available for Australia.