Deepal News

First we had to get our heads around the multitude of new brands going on sale in Australia, now we’re trying to cope with the massive power outputs of the models as Chinese brand Lynk & Co launches its 900 large SUV with a plug-in hybrid system producing a colossal 540kW.The price is relatively small too with the Range Rover-sized, and also extremely luxurious 900, listing for about $62,000 in China.There is more than a passing resemblance to the Range Rover, with the hulking 900 featuring a set-back cabin, tall windows and rounded rear end. Inside the cabin has a minimal design with a giant media screen spanning most of the dashboard.The 900 has three rows of two seats with the second row able to be turned to face the third. A giant drop-down roof-mounted  30-inch 6K media screen is also available for entertainment. Powering the 900 is a choice of two powertrains. The first is a plug-in hybrid 1.5-litre turbo-petrol four cylinder engine making a 140kW and that in turn is paired to two electric motors: a 160kW unit on the front axle and a 230kW motor at the rear. Total combined output is 530kW.The second is also a plug-in hybrid but it uses a 2.0-litre petrol engine with two electric motors - one at the front making 123kW and a rear motor making 230kW for a combined 540kW.As for battery size the 1.5-litre variant has a 44.85kW unit while the 2.0-litre version has a 52.38kWh pack. According to Lynk & Co both 900 models have a combined range of up to about 1350km (CLTC)The big news really is the price with the 900 listing from $62,000 in China. It's not known if Lynk & Co will launch the 900 in Australia. Currently the company is holding off its arrival into our market until its parent company, Zeekr, establishes itself here.The past two years have seen numerous Chinese car manufacturers enter the Australian market including BYD, Geely, Leapmotor, Deepal and JAC.Zeekr, which is owned by auto giant Geely, recently took control over Lynk & Co and it is expected to arrive in Australia by 2028.Zeekr meanwhile has launched it little X SUV and its 009 people mover and a mid-sized 7X will arrive in 2025, too.  Zeekr's 9X which uses the same foundations as the Lynk & Co 900 may also arrive in Australia.

In 2025 branding means way more than a hot iron mark scorched into a steer’s backside.It’s about a brand’s personality, reputation and your interactions with it. What it says about you. What it delivers. How it makes you feel. A visual identity, a design style… and a million other things.   And there are automotive brands in the Australian new-car market that have strategically built solid brand equity over many decades.Current market leader, Toyota began dipping its corporate toe into global export waters by shipping cars here in the late 1950s. And other Japanese makers like Honda, Mazda and Nissan followed it in conquering initial hesitancy by steadily investing in strong retail networks, pushing product improvement and focusing on a positive customer experience.Ford has built its global brand around everything from the Model T and its revolutionary assembly line to pumped up muscle cars and victory at Le Mans. While here it embedded itself in the local landscape via a manufacturing presence spanning close to a century and regular victory at Mount Panorama.And more recently, relative newcomers like Hyundai and Kia have moved rapidly from cheap and (mostly) cheerful to innovators that repositioned the concept of value and quality in the local market.All of which led to large pockets of ‘rusted on’ brand loyalty. The concept of ‘Ford and Holden families’ started to diminish from the moment the latter departed the scene in 2020 (if not before), but Toyota’s reputation for value, durability and affordable ownership has seen it maintain a legion of never-say-die fans.Same for Ford, Mazda, Mitsubishi and others. But I'd argue a turning point was when, after an initial false start through a private importer in 2013, MG set up as a direct subsidiary in 2017.Great Wall had landed as the first Chinese car brand in the Aussie market in 2009, but MG 2.0 was different. Even if its ‘Since 1924’ positioning stretched credulity, its products were better than expected and pricing was ultra sharp.Sharp enough to encourage budget-focused new-car buyers, even used-car prospects, to give the brand a go.With the introduction of new-generation products in the early 2020s sales took off like a rocket, and it’s here that my ‘That’s a good idea’ theory kicks in.I reckon executives at rival Chinese car brands, keeping an eye on MG’s increasing success Down Under, all had the same ‘good idea’ at the same time. Namely, let’s get into Australia and grab a piece of that action. Hence the subsequent arrival of Chery in 2023, itself a factory-backed restart after an initial import-distribution arrangement broke down back in 2011. Followed by the flood gates opening, with BYD, Deepal, Geely, a ramped up GWM, JAC, LDV, Leapmotor, Smart, Jaecoo, XPeng and Zeekr all jumping in with Aion, Avatar, Jetour, Lynk & Co, Skyworth and others waiting in the wings.Doesn’t matter which category you’re talking about - white goods, sporting equipment, hi-fi - if one fresh competitor enters a mature market, it’s likely to be met with reluctance, even contempt by existing brand loyalists.But if near enough to 20 newcomers blaze into market at the same time, clearly something seismic is going on and it feels like you’d be missing a trick if you didn’t at least investigate the rapidly changing competitive landscape.Give them the benefit of 20/20 hindsight as well as a time machine and it’s not certain all the new brands above would currently be making an Aussie entrance.But multiple triggers have been pulled with retail network deals done, head office staff recruited, parts warehousing set up, service and sales training completed and marketing campaigns launched. So, in a mature market, early movers like MG, Chery and GWM have the advantage and more recent arrivals will need to find a way to win over buyers… fast. And it’s a fair bet the ever-impactful lever marked price will be pulled on a regular basis.Some of the newcomers as well as more than a few existing legacy brands will be forced into a price war. Like it or not, loyalty comes under pressure when the incentive is enticing enough and with a cut-price cage fight likely to take place sooner rather than later not everyone will leave the octagon alive.Stand by for new-car buyers tempted en masse into ‘unbeatable deals’ that mean brand loyalties will be stretched beyond breaking point. The shake out from this looming war of attrition will be huge. 

Deepal's odd ute-SUV priced!

As if we weren’t already inundated with new Chinese utes following last weekend’s Melbourne Motor Show, in which JAC, Foton and MG previewed incoming models, it appears another entrant has its eyes set on the Australian market.

The rapid and seemingly unstoppable expansion of Chinese carmakers is something to behold.But is it too far-fetched to think all cars will be Chinese within the next 20 years? Or is it naive not to see it as a strong possibility?For a long time I’ve thought the emergence of new Chinese cars in Australia and globally was the natural progression of the car industry. New brands morph from alternative fledgling brands to mature and established ones. We saw this with Japanese brands such as Toyota, Mazda, Mitsubishi and Nissan which gained popularity in the 1960s and ’70s before becoming established go-to brands in the 1980s and ’90s as they fought homegrown heroes Ford and Holden for space in Australia's driveways. And it stayed that way until the first decade of the 2000s ticked over.Holden and Ford’s ranges and sales shrank giving way to the Koreans who filled the gap with Hyundai and Kia which have climbed high into the top 10 thanks to an excellent range of SUVs and EVs.They’re now marching towards the only brands that stand in their way - Mitsubishi, Ford, Mazda and Toyota - which, by the way, have about three EVs between them.And given another five years Kia and Hyundai may have been able to topple Toyota from number one. But it might be too late for that. The presence of a large and fast-growing force is creating major uncertainty for the established brands in the Australian market - the rise and rise of Chinese brands. At the end of 2024 there were 12 Chinese brands operating in Australia and this year we’re expecting at least another seven to arrive. To put that in perspective we currently have a total of 50 car brands in Australia and nine are Japanese. By the end of 2025 the Chinese tally could easily be 20 brands or 30 per cent of Australia's brand make up.Several Chinese brands have been in Australia for years and have already done the hard yards. It took MG a couple of attempts to find a foothold but it was the seventh best-selling brand in 2024, while GWM came in at 10th. LDV is further down but still sold more than 16,000 vehicles here last year.The newer Chinese arrivals show huge promise with most of them offering affordable electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids when the established brands have only a handful among them, usually at higher prices.BYD, Zeekr, Leapmotor, Geely, Deepal, XPeng, Smart, JAC, Aion, Chery and Jaecoo will spend 2025 launching a multitude of new vehicles here. BYD will be one to watch having sold more cars here last year than Mercedes-Benz and it will likely enter the top 10 best sellers next year. Geely, which is the ‘Volkswagen of China’ in terms of its size and how many brands it owns, is another to watch.Chinese car manufacturers' speed of production, the development of new platforms and technology, the low cost of batteries, availability of electronics and the breakthroughs being made in charging systems, plus the sheer amount of money and Chinese government support behind them make competition almost impossible for many other brands.It’s almost certain that some established brands will bow out of Australia, unable to compete with Chinese brands. It’s also feasible that within the next decade more than half the Australian market could be made up of Chinese brands. And surely some Chinese brands won’t be able to cut it here and leave, too.Who could survive? Well, time has shown that even the mighty like Holden have fallen if they don’t make the cars people want to buy. The sheer brute force of Chinese brands being able to offer what people want quickly and at a low price, and at an always improving tech level could be too difficult for many other brands to fight off.In an extreme scenario this could lead to a 100 per cent Chinese brand market within 15 years. Sounds far fetched? Well they’re a third of the way there already.  

In reviewing Deepal’s just-released S07 mid-size EV SUV CarsGuide’s Andrew Chesterton called the newcomer’s active (crash-avoidance) safety systems “the single biggest drawback of the Deepal experience” defining them as “the most annoying (and) infuriating” he had ever come across. 

Hot on the heels of its recently introduced mid-size S07 EV SUV, Deepal Australia has confirmed it will be joined by two new models in the second half of this year - the smaller S05 SUV and category-bending E07, the latter combining key attributes of a five-seat SUV with a convertible ute rear end.

Range extender electric vehicles are the next frontier and China.  Dubbed EREV for short, an efficient petrol engine powers a generator which sends charge to a battery larger than a typical plug-in hybrid and the next big vehicle to launch with this technology is the twin-screened, six-seat, luxury Deepal S09. 

Another Chinese newcomer has landed in Australia with a five-star ANCAP safety rating.The Deepal S07 electric mid-size SUV is a cut-price rival to the Tesla Model Y, Kia EV5, Xpeng G6 and more.ANCAP awarded the Deepal S07 a score of 95 per cent for Adult Occupant Protection, one of four safety criteria in the testing regime. It is an equal best result with the Toyota Camry.ANCAP said the result was backed up by "unblemished" injury risk scores for the driver in the side-impact ‘T-bone’ and oblique pole crash tests and the front-seat passenger in the frontal offset ‘head-on’ crash test.The design and structure of the Deepal S07 also stood up to ANCAP testing, with the S07 only scoring a minor deduction of 0.86 points out of a possible 8.00 penalty for vehicle compatibility in the frontal offset crash test.Full points were awarded for child occupant protection in the frontal offset and side impact test.Despite the S07 utilising electronically-retractable door handles, ANCAP found no issues in accessing the inside of the vehicle in the post-crash assessment, with the S07’s doors able to be opened once the vehicle lost power.Additionally, ANCAP also found that its electric windows were able to be opened following water submergence.More mixed results were seen in the use of the S07’s advanced driver assistance systems, such as its Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) system in pedestrian testing scenarios.A “marginal” result was even recorded for the AEB crossing scenarios where the S07 showed limited auto-braking performance when crossing the path of another car.The AEB system did, however, receive a “good” score in car-to-car scenarios, while "good" results were also recorded for the performance of the car’s Lane-Keep Assist system.ANCAP CEO Carla Hoorweg said it was refreshing to see new car brands entering the Australian market taking safety seriously.“We’ve seen a number of new brands enter the local market over the past year and they continue to impress in meeting the high safety standard Australian consumers and fleet buyers expect,” said ANCAP Chief Executive Officer, Carla Hoorweg.The full safety report for the Deepal S07 can be viewed on ANCAP’s website here.

Despite a backwards step in 2024, Chinese cars are on-track to bounce back in 2025 as a flood of new brands enter the market.While brands like BYD, MG, GWM and Chery have already established themselves, a new wave is on the way to challenge Japan as Australia’s biggest car importer.By the end of 2024 there were 12 Chinese brands officially in the Australian market and at least two more have announced plans for entry into our market in 2025 with more expected to follow. Japan, by contrast, only has nine brands in our local market but still comfortably leads the overall production with nearly 379,000 vehicles from Japan sold here in 2024.That compares to 272,139 from Thailand and 176,159 from China. Those figures don’t account for a brand’s national base but rather simply where they are built, so it includes certain Tesla, Volvo and other models from different brands.But while Japan and Thailand still lead the way as the most popular countries for new-car production, China appears on-course to overtake them in the not-too-distant future at the current rate.With the likes of Zeekr, Leapmotor, Deepal, XPeng, Geely, Smart, JAC, GAC/Aion, Jaecoo and more set to grow in 2025, plus expanded product lines from BYD, MG, GWM and Chery, the approximate 96,000 sales difference between China and Thailand could shrink dramatically this year.The industry is well aware of the rapid growth of the Chinese car industry in Australia, with Toyota Australia’s Head of Sales, Marketing and Franchise Operations, Sean Hanley, commenting this week: “The Australian new-car market has always been one of the most competitive in the world, and 2025 will be no different. We expect to see more new brands and models, which means more choice and even stronger competition, which, in the end, is great for the consumer.“By all reports, there could be a dozen new Chinese car companies arriving in Australia by the end of next year. In the past five years, they have taken more than 13 percentage points of market share from established brands.”Hanley was quick to point out that while these new brands have taken significant market share, Toyota remains the clear leader.However, that growth must come from somewhere and that will force brands across the market to react to this new array of rivals. This is likely to result in increased competition for Australian buyers at a time when cost-of-living pressures are expected to cool the market after record sales in 2024.