Utes

Before the Toyota HiLux BEV and Isuzu D-Max EV arrives, South Korea's KGM has beaten them to the punch with its new electric dual-cab ute, the Musso EV.

It looks like an all-electric ute from Kia won’t happen.It was just earlier this year the brand confirmed its plans to introduce an all-electric ute by 2030 to partner its Tasman diesel sibling. The Tasman joined the Australian market in April 2025 as a 2.2-litre diesel and is approaching 3000 sales for the year. Kia is now probing a hybrid version of the ute to take on the strong-selling BYD Shark 6.The EV pick-up was planned to be built for North America, which lends to the prospect of it being a similar size to the big pick-ups such as Ford’s F-150 and the Chevrolet Silverado. The ute was expected to sell 90,000 units annually “mid-to-long-term”, following a full launch. This exceeds expectations for the Tasman, which is targeted for a 80,000-unit annual global sales target. Now tariffs appear to be stunting any progress on an EV pick-up truck from Kia, according to Car and Driver.Heavy tariffs remain on Korean steel, aluminium and derivative products. The consequence of these tariffs has caused the brand to indefinitely delay the launch of its EV4 sedan in the US.The same tariff-related trouble is forcing the South Korean company to backtrack on its EV ute aspirations, with the project regressing back into the ‘evaluation stage’. With Kia’s plans for a big EV ute fading away in the US, it seems unlikely that Australia will see something similar from Kia in the market for some time.Kia already sell several EVs in Australia and will bring across its EV4 sedan in January 2026, followed by a hatch variant later next year.The Kia EV pick-up's apparent demise continues a growing trend of big EV utes struggling to get off the ground, particularly in the US. Earlier this year, RAM put its 1500 all-electric full-size pick-up on ice, citing slowing demand for the decision, while Tesla was also forced to cull its cheapest Cybertruck variant.Ford’s F-150 Lightning has been an exception, with its sales recovering confidently after the brand temporarily halted production late last year. 

Ford’s F-150 experiment in Australia has hit lots of bumps along the road.Sales of the big rig have slowed to a trickle, with just four deliveries recorded in the past four months. A far cry from the 200-plus a month that were finding homes at the start of this year.This has been due to a hold on deliveries from as far back as July for what is believed to be a fix for quality issues.Good news, the long pause is over and the supply of F-150s will start to flow again once recall fixes have been undertaken.In that time it has ceded a lot of ground to its competitors.Ford has fallen well behind its rivals with just 549 F-150 sales through the first 10 months of this year. Ram has sold 2321 1500s in that time, Chevrolet has sold 1814 Silverado 1500s and Toyota 676 Tundras.The big American pick-up truck launched in 2023, but has been hit with numerous stop sale orders due to compliance issues and multiple recalls, which raises quality concerns.Ford Australia gave the contract to Thai-based company RMA Automotive to convert the F-150 from left-hand drive to right-hand drive in a Melbourne factory.The Blue Oval’s main rivals the Ram 1500, Chevrolet Silverado and Toyota Tundra are all converted by Walkinshaw, the company previously known for delivering fast Holdens. Remanufacturing vehicles from left- to right-hand drive is a big and complicated operation. The F-150 alone uses about 500 new parts and takes about 22 hours to convert.Ford has also just launched the Ranger Super Duty, which fills the role of the F-150 in many situations.It matches the F-150’s 4500kg braked towing capacity and has a superior GVM (4500kg) and GCM (8000kg).It is also cheaper and smaller, making it more palatable for Australian roads and car buying public.The Super Duty also uses diesel grunt compared to the F-150’s petrol power. The Super Duty uses a 154kW and 600Nm 3.0-litre turbo diesel V6 engine and the F-150 is powered by a 3.5-litre turbo-petrol V6 (298kW/678Nm).Ford’s Australian CEO Andrew Birkic recently told CarsGuide the F-150 was going nowhere.“I would see and the full-size pick-up segment as two different customers,” he said.“I think the full-size pick-up will continue to do well because it has a particular customer.”

There might not be a better time to buy that new car you’ve been thinking about.

Ford's new Super Duty is born from the demands of its buyers, but can the brand capture that Raptor magic in creating an entirely new dual-cab niche?

Nissan's slick new ute has taken a surprising turn. It was previously thought the Nissan Frontier Pro ute would only launch with a plug-in hybrid set-up, but it has now been revealed with a petrol and diesel engine options in China.The Frontier Pro PHEV is destined for a global launch, with Australia potentially on the cards. Nissan Oceania Vice President and Managing Director Andrew Humberstone said that the brand is working on getting the ute down under. “New Navara and Frontier Pro together? Oh, yeah, absolutely,” he said to CarsGuide.“And it wouldn't be one or the other. I would absolutely see an opportunity for both of them (in Australia).”The Frontier Pro plug-in hybrid has a 1.5-litre turbo-petrol engine, with a single electric motor producing 320kW and 800Nm. Its pure electric driving range is 135km according to the very generous CLTC testing system. The new petrol and diesel engines put it on a collision course with some of the biggest sellers in Australia, such as the Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux.The 2.0-litre turbo-petrol engine produces 192kW and 400Nm, while the 2.3-litre turbo-diesel motor produces 140kW and 500Nm. Both are paired with an eight-speed automatic transmission. The Frontier Pro came about as a joint venture between Nissan and Dongfeng Motor Group and is designed and built in China. This will be the first time one of Nissan’s Chinese vehicles will take on the global market. Nissan currently sells the Navara ute in Australia, which comes exclusively with a 2.3-litre turbo-diesel engine. The brand recently announced a new D27-series Navara, which will launch in the first quarter of 2026 and will be tasked with turning around a tough sales decline. The current generation Navara starts from $36,428 (before on-road costs) for the single cab chassis, with the whole Navara range mustering less than 6,500 sales so far in 2025. This leaves it far behind many of its rivals such as the Ford Ranger, Toyota HiLux and Isuzu D-Max, who collectively are approaching 100,000 sales in 2025. The plug-in hybrid variant of the Frontier Pro would have to hunt down BYD’s Shark 6, which has had an excellent start to life in Australia, with more than 15,000 sales in Australia. A new diesel variant, if it were to come to Australia, would go into direct competition with the big hitters of the segment. 

Nissan tried but failed with its previous (and maybe last-ever) in-house-developed diesel one-tonne ute, the D23 Navara. For 2026, the "all-new" D27 Navara is a mildly-restyled Mitsubishi (MV) Triton, and might only be Australia/New Zealand-only, for now. But there is one massive difference, and that is the retuned suspension, courtesy of Melbourne's Premcar, that is behind the Warrior series.

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.

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’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.