Chery plans tailored dealer-network sizes for its nine-brand Australian line-up

Nine brands, deliberately unequal ambitions

Chery has defended the scale of its Australian brand expansion, telling Australian media including CarExpert in Wuhu that some of its marques will target small customer groups and operate with more limited dealer networks than its mainstream names. The group's existing and announced local plans now cover nine brand names: Chery, Omoda, Jaecoo, Jetour, iCaur, Lepas, Exlantix, Luxeed and Freelander. That count treats Omoda and Jaecoo separately, although they operate together locally under the Omoda Jaecoo business. ¹

Chery International president Zhang Guibing identified Chery and Omoda Jaecoo as the main brands, with different expectations for the others. "Some other brands, I think they are mainly not for big volumes," he said. "Different brands have different positions. For some, we are concerned about volume. Some may just make a very small customer group happy." ¹

Mr Zhang said the size of each target customer group would influence how each brand was developed, including how many dealers were appointed, and that he had asked his teams to study different dealer limits for each brand. CarExpert's report notes these network figures are brand targets, not completed appointments. ¹

Chery International vice-president Chen Chunqing separately said brands would be introduced one by one according to their suitability for the market, and that not all of the group's nine brands would necessarily come to Australia. Mr Zhang echoed this, saying the global portfolio did not automatically have to be replicated locally. According to CarExpert, Chery has few brands left beyond those confirmed for Australia: the light-commercial Rely and Karry names plus Soueast, which is closely associated with Jetour. ¹⁶

Dealer-network targets taking shape

Concrete network plans are already emerging. CarExpert reports Freelander is targeting around 25 dealers for its proposed 2027 launch, while Lepas aims to have 40 outlets operating by the end of 2026. Lepas chief operating officer for Chery Australia Lucas Harris had earlier detailed the brand's rollout to GoAuto News Premium at a Sydney preview event, saying around 30 dealerships would be open on day one with another 10 online within six weeks, constrained only by signage installation capacity. ¹⁴

Speaking with GoAuto News Premium, Mr Harris described Lepas's network as "totally separate" from the group's other brands, with the total network size planned at around 50 to 60 dealers in the long term. He said that expansion would be volume-dependent, because Chery needed its first dealers to reach a profitable business quickly given their investment in new facilities. CarExpert's earlier report on Lepas said the brand would have 40 dealers at launch, with plans to increase to 50 by the end of 2027 — a figure that differs from GoAuto Premium's longer-term 50-to-60 target, and both outlets' numbers should be read as targets rather than final counts. ⁴²

Scale differs sharply between the group's brands. GoAuto News Premium reports the Chery brand itself has opened over 85 authorised dealers across Australia, targeting 100 by the end of the year, while CarExpert's earlier Lepas coverage put the Chery brand network at around 120 locations expected to grow to about 150 by the end of 2027. These two figures conflict and are not reconcilable on the available record. Omoda Jaecoo, meanwhile, opened its 50th dealership earlier in 2026, according to GoAuto News Premium. ⁴²

iCaur has also begun recruiting Australian dealers and is planning a separate sales and service network ahead of launching with the V25 SUV in early 2027. iCaur International CEO Ronna Luo told media including CarExpert that the service and sales networks would be different from Chery's, but she did not nominate a target number of sites, saying coverage would need to reflect where its customers live. ⁸

Shared back-end, separate shopfronts

The commercial logic behind the expansion, as Mr Harris explained to CarExpert, is that a new brand can lean on infrastructure Chery Australia has already built. "Selling cars is the straightforward part, right? It's the warranty, technical, parts, all those kinds of systems to integrate with dealers and customers. We have that infrastructure," he said. "Trying to do everything from zero to one, we've already got the zero to one part." ²³

Lepas will use back-end systems already established for other Chery brands, with some existing dealerships acting as service agents in rural and provincial areas. Mr Harris told CarExpert the tooling and the dealer-facing systems for warranty and parts ordering would be the same, and that Lepas would have strong parts supply from launch, with a launch threshold of 98 per cent of each model's bill of materials physically stocked in Australia. Freelander also expects to use Chery's parts and vehicle distribution infrastructure, according to CarExpert. ²³¹

Mr Harris acknowledged the added cost of establishing a dealership network, marketing an unknown name and shoring up resale values in a market with more than 70 brands, but argued the viability of a new brand no longer relied on the whole business working for it, telling CarExpert: "The back-end infrastructure, we already have it set up anyway, and whether or not we have this brand or not we still have to have that back-end infrastructure." ³

Not everything is shared. iCaur, according to reporting by CarExpert published by 7NEWS, has yet to outline its Australian parts arrangements or service pricing, and has not confirmed whether it will match the Chery brand's seven-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty or Omoda Jaecoo's eight-year, unlimited-kilometre coverage. Ms Luo also did not specify whether iCaur dealers would need standalone premises or whether existing Chery franchise owners could participate. ⁸

Overlapping SUVs and how Chery plans to separate them

The potential for internal overlap is real. CarExpert notes the Lepas L6 plug-in hybrid will enter the same mid-size SUV market as the Chery Tiggo 7 Super Hybrid and Jaecoo J7 plug-in hybrid, while Jetour's T1 and T2 will add further mid-size SUVs. Asked whether he wanted the brands to compete with each other, Mr Zhang told CarExpert: "Basically, they need to compete each other." ¹

There is an unresolved discrepancy over the launch model's powertrain. While CarExpert's Wuhu report describes the Lepas L6 as a plug-in hybrid, GoAuto News Premium identifies the L6 as a mid-size electric SUV making its showroom debut in October following its public showing at the Everything Electric show in Sydney, and CarExpert's own earlier Lepas coverage likewise describes it as the L6 EV. The available record does not reconcile these accounts, so buyers should treat the L6's powertrain details as not yet settled across sources. ¹⁴²

Mr Zhang pointed to similarities between vehicles from Chery and competitors including BYD, Geely and GWM, and said distinction would increasingly come from brand image rather than product alone. On separating its own marques, he said customer groups would generally be made different though some could overlap, and that pricing would help: "iCaur and later Lepas will have prices a little further away from Chery or Omoda," he told CarExpert. He also described giving individual brand teams more authority over products and marketing, saying his own involvement could be counterproductive when he was not part of a brand's target customer group. ¹

The expansion goes beyond variations on the same SUV formula. CarExpert reports Exlantix plans to launch an ES GT shooting brake alongside its new ET SUV in the first half of 2027, while Luxeed will start with the LLounge people mover in the second quarter of 2027 before adding the Stormax electric SUV. iCaur will launch with the V25 mid-size SUV, followed by the V27 large SUV. ¹⁷

Local engineering and a contrast with rivals

Chery is also establishing a research and development centre in Australia, staffed by local engineers, to adapt its models to Australian conditions before they go on sale. Mr Zhang outlined the plan at a media round table in Wuhu during the Chery Group User Summit, telling reporters including AutoTrader: "We are creating an R&D centre in Australia, and we will use more local people to teach Chery... The driving habits and the road conditions are very different there, so we need local people to really understand them." He said the centre's work would cover any brand Chery is willing to launch in Australia, not just one badge. ⁶

Mr Chen confirmed Chery plans further investment in Australia, citing the Stockman ute as an example, saying Australia would be the first launch country for that product, even before China. AutoTrader reports the Stockman's Australian launch has been pushed back to 1 February, and that its project chief engineer has acknowledged work remains to be done on the vehicle; Australian and New Zealand media in China for the summit were not permitted to drive it. ⁶

Chery's many-brand approach contrasts with other Chinese automakers in Australia, as William Stopford's analysis for CarExpert, published by 7NEWS, outlines: GWM has folded Haval, Tank and Wey into a single GWM banner, GAC sells its Trumpchi and Aion models under one GAC banner, and BYD has expanded its model line-ups but still operates only its namesake brand plus Denza locally. The same analysis notes Chery delivered 53,478 vehicles in Australia year-to-date to the end of September 2026, behind BYD's 79,953 across BYD and Denza but ahead of GWM, MG and Geely. How the sales race and the investment-versus-return balance shake out under Chery's multi-brand model remains to be seen, the analysis concludes. ⁵