Could Chery Build Electric Vehicles for Australia in Thailand?

Thailand’s automotive industry continues to grow, announcing this week it is investing in Chinese car maker Chery to produce electric vehicles in the country – and Australia could be a beneficiary of the relationship.

Earlier this month, the Thai government’s Board of Investment (BOI) approved an undisclosed investment in Chery to build an electric vehicle factory in Rayong province – about 2.5 hours southeast of Bangkok – in the coming years.

The Bangkok Post Chery will reportedly use the factory to build electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) for its sub-brands Omoda and Jaecoo, with plans to export the vehicles to countries in the ASEAN region, Oceania and the Middle East.

Chery, China’s third-largest carmaker, sold more than 1.8 million vehicles in its home market and abroad last year, including 5,890 in Australia.

The brand relaunched locally in mid-2023 with the Omoda 5 and later the Tiggo 7 Pro, while the larger Tiggo 8 Pro Max is due to hit showrooms shortly.

Chery has also announced plans to bring Jaecoo to Australia this year, initially with the Toyota RAV4-sized J7 petrol-powered SUV.

According to the Bangkok PostChery plans to produce the Omoda 5 EV (soon to be called Omoda E5 here) and the Jaecoo J7 PHEV at the factory. The goal is to build 50,000 vehicles annually in the first production phase before increasing production to 80,000 vehicles in 2028.

Although Australia was not specifically mentioned, there is a possibility that Chery’s future electric vehicles for our market could come from Thailand.

In 2023, Thailand was the second largest source of production for new cars sold in Australia. With 264,253 Thai-built cars delivered, Thailand was second only to automobile giant Japan, which contributed 345,071 to the total sales of 1,216,780 new vehicles.

However, the majority of vehicles built in Thailand for Australia are SUVs and their body-on-SUV counterparts such as the Ford Ranger/Everest, Toyota HiLux and Isuzu D-Max/MU-X.

Meanwhile, China overtook South Korea for the first time to take third place on Australia’s new car sales charts. The 193,433 cars imported from the country represented a huge increase of 57.5 percent year-on-year.

Chery is not the first Chinese automaker to start operations in Thailand. BYD, GWM and Changan have all set up shop there in recent years – although all of the vehicles manufactured by these brands and sold in Australia come from China.

MORE: “Nothing is off the table” when it comes to other Chery brands in Australia