Ute News

The electric car onslaught will continue in 2026 with the announcement of more than 20 new models in Australia.

All-electric off-roaders were all the rage just a year or so ago, but now demand has tapered off.

BYD is expanding its Shark 6 ute range in Australia.

Volkswagen has dropped plans to build an electric version of its Amarok ute.

Volkswagen has conceded defeat in the fight against Ford’s Ranger Raptor.Just weeks away from revealing the details of the second-generation Walkinshaw collaboration on the Amarok ute Volkswagen Australia commercial vehicles boss Nathan Johnson has played down the notion that it will ‘attack’ Ford’s performance ute hero.“We're just trying to enhance the Volkswagen Amarok appeal in terms of what we're doing,” Johnson told CarsGuide. “We're not trying to go and say that we're gonna attack Raptor. Raptor works in its own space and we'd be silly to kind of just say that we're coming after Raptor because Raptor is such a part of the Australian psyche, everyone wants one.“We've gotta play to our own tune here and work what we think will work for Amarok. And I think we've got a pretty good package that's coming.”Volkswagen Australia first partnered with Walkinshaw for the so-called ‘W Series’ Amaroks in the final years of the previous generation ute. While there was always a plan to continue, the two parties haven’t rushed the development of this new iteration, spending more than two years developing the new hero model for the Amarok line-up.“ It's taken a while from face value because we spoke about it quite early on,” Johnson said. “Because to be quite honest with you, the day that we launched Amarok, the first question I had in an interview as a product manager was ‘when is the Walkinshaw Amarok coming?’”While he ruled out a direct challenger to the Ranger Raptor, Johnson was adamant that the long development time will result in a vehicle that is unique in the market and will have its own appeal.“ I think it's a very different scenario ,” he said. “The previous Amarok we were coming to the end of production and it was very different in terms of how we worked on that car and how we pushed it.“This one was very different in terms of, we'd only started production. We're taking a very different approach to this car in terms of the previous one we had to obviously… compromise on a few things that we really wanted to do with our car. With the time period we had and we could have made some decisions to move down different routes, but it probably would've compromised the end product and so forth. So we made the decision not to.“Whereas this time around we've got time, we've got time on our hands and we've been working with Walkinshaw a long time on this to make sure that we can assess everything and make sure that we are working with the right partners, developing all the different bits, the components of the car, and then actually doing a really strong testing program.”Volkswagen reportedly finalised the design of the new Walkinshaw Amarok earlier this year, in April, and has been testing since then.

BYD has broken the hearts of anyone hoping a "Baby Shark" will join the fleet to sit below the Shark 6 in Australia, with one of the company's top executives pouring cold water on reports the new model was incoming.

GWM has admitted there is still plenty of work left to do to boost the popularity of its entry-level Cannon 4x2 and 4x4 range in Australia. Whilst recording a decent 19 per cent volume rise year-to-date, to just under 7000 units, on the back of a significant diesel engine and transmission upgrade earlier this year as part of 2025 facelift, the keenly-priced Chinese mid-sized ute is only in seventh spot.

Nissan and Australia’s Premcar are again collaborating on a Warrior version of the Navara – and this time everything steps up. Unveiled on the same night that the all-new D27 Navara series made its global debut in Adelaide as the Warrior Concept, the off-road flagship that is one of the few bright spots in the company’s floundering fortunes is now important enough to get equal top billing with Nissan’s crucial international mid-sized ute.

Nissan’s last great hope of reversing a long-term sales decline in Australia has finally been unveiled in the form of the D27-series of Navara.

A forgotten ute is poised to make a return to the Aussie market, a Federal Department of Infrastructure filing has confirmed.