+++ BYD will launch a wave of models designed and developed in Europe for Europe over the next 3 years, starting with the plug-in hybrid Dolphin G next month. The Dolphin G effectively serve as a combustion-engined alternative to the Dolphin SurfV, making it the smallest PHEV available in Europe. Executive vice-president Stella Li has previously told that “our goal is for customers to think of BYD as a European brand”. She said: “The Dolphin G is the first product we have designed for Europe, as there is no interest in China for this type of car, and in the future there will be more and more products designed for European tastes and consumer needs and designed here”. She continued: “We see the bigger gap now. In China the competition is making cars bigger and bigger and the chassis wider and wider; it has become crazy. This makes it impossible in Europe: you cannot have a bigger car running in Paris, in Milan, in Rome, in London. People there still prefer the smaller-sized cars. So then I saw a very clear roadmap. In certain ranges such as the B- or C-segment we are going to split. We are going to have a European standard. “Sometimes I have to tell the engineer: ‘Don’t make this car bigger, not for Europe. It needs to be smaller than 4.3 meter, not bigger.’ I see a very clear split now between China and Europe. In the next 3 years, car design for these models will be much more for Europe. No longer will China cars be shipped to here to share with Europe”. Li didn’t go into further details about the future models, but she did imply that all of these cars would be built in Europe. Work is currently being completed on BYD’s new plant in Hungary, which will open later this year. The first models to be built there will be the Dolphin Surf and Atto 2, and it’s possible that the Dolphin G could join them. +++
+++ CHERY , China’s biggest car exporter, is aiming to be the UK’s third largest car group for new car sales. It’s planning to build up British R&D to help in this mission, says the company’s UK boss Gary Lan. In a year, Chery has mushroomed from 2 to just under 7 percent market share, off the back of phenomenal growth for its Jaecoo and Omoda brands. Chery itself joined the fray last autumn, and Lan says its data shows the mothership brand has similar ‘momentum’ to Jaecoo, whose ‘7’ is the UK’s third best-selling new car so far this year. The boss told that Chery’s UK launch was a 20-year-long ambition “because the market is sophisticated and mature. For a company that takes years to be here, the top-10, top-5 or top-3 is a proud achievement for a newcomer. What really matters is that we grow our share with good customer satisfaction, good media reputation, good residual values and good retailer profitability”. Year-to-date, Chery-Omoda-Jaecoo is the UK’s fifth biggest car group, with 46.090 registrations. It’ll have to overtake BMW-Mini (61k) and Hyundai-Kia (74k) to tuck in behind Stellantis and top dog Volkswagen Group on the podium. Chery will push for more registrations by better honing its cars for UK buyers, with an announcement on R&D due imminently. “Step 2 is UK R&D engineering because this is a unique market”, he pledged. A priority will be setting up the driver-assistance systems to cope with British road layouts. Lan admitted the lane-keep assist needs to be more finely tuned. This also goes for driver monitoring, as well as adjustments to the ride and handling. More automated cars would need to understand what drivers mean when they flash their lights, to capitalise on being let out, he added. R&D will mean additions to Chery’s UK workforce, which has already grown from 40 to 150 people. Lan talked of partnering with a university such as Warwick to develop engineering capabilities, and said: “We can seek help from the UK to find talent for our business, for our vehicle to be more British. The ultimate goal is UK production. That will be step four”, said Lan. Nissan has held talks with Chery and the Japanese firm’s Chinese JV partner Dongfeng to boost capacity utilisation at its Sunderland plant. Nissan recently announced that production of the Leaf, Qashqai and Juke had been consolidated on one line, leaving another assembly line vacant. “Sunderland is a very cost-competitive plant”, Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa told. “What it’s missing is volume. It is one of the best we have worldwide, actually. So we will continue to try to find a partner. And you know, looking at the operational competitiveness of the plant, I’m sure we will be able to find interested stakeholders to work with us in the plant”. Nissan is assessing bringing the NX8 electric SUV to Europe, and exporting other EVs built by Dongfeng in China to the Middle East and other regions. Whether the numbers add up to Sunderland production is another matter, but it’s clear that Chery, at least, will be providing UK industry with a shot in the arm. +++
+++ The CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, P.B. Balaji, has confirmed that the Land Rover Discovery is on the cusp of total revolution. The brand is preparing a new generation of family-friendly, but still very off-road capable SUVs. Speaking with journalists, Balaji said: “ DISCOVERY is very much part of our ‘House of Brands’. This is an important part of our offering to the customers, and where the customer is able to access the brand, and the entire JLR franchise, at much more affordable prices”. For Land Rover, its reimagination of the Defender has been a colossal success. But it has also come at the expense of Discovery, whose customers have made a bee-line for the more polished and variable Defender. As was predicted at its launch, the Defender has effectively out-competed the Discovery for many customers, leaving JLR in a bind about how to position future models. Balaji continued: “At the same time, it needs to be uniquely differentiated. Some customers have indeed migrated to a Defender. And therefore, that is the work that we are currently on to. “You should expect to hear from us, future plans on Discovery, sooner rather than later. We are as committed to the Discovery as any of our other brands”. This suggests that the Discovery brand could be in the process of a wholesale reinvention, similar to that undertaken by the Defender and, more controversially, Jaguar. However there are still questions about how much daylight remains between the Defender and more opulent Range Rover lines, not forgetting the incoming range of Chery-developed Freelander models that’ll offer similar levels of space to a potential Discovery replacement, and at an even lower price point. Land Rover won’t be slowing down its Defender development either, as the brand will ‘double-down’ on that brand pillar, and build on the success that family of vehicles has generated. +++
+++ JAGUAR LAND ROVER ’s annual profits have slumped by more than 99 percent as it counted the cost of US tariffs and a cyber-attack that disrupted its factories for months. Britain’s largest carmaker made only 16 million euro in profit before tax and exceptional items in the year to March, down from 2.8 billion euro the year before, according to financial results published on Thursday. The manufacturer, which employs 33.000 people in the UK, suffered a series of blows as Donald Trump’s automotive industry tariffs caused turmoil in its important export market. That was followed by a damaging cyber-attack on the last day of August that forced the company to shut down most of its systems and factories for weeks, with disruption rippling on through the autumn. The tariffs, which Trump raised to 25% before agreeing a deal for 10% for the UK, hit US demand for JLR’s luxury cars, before supply of products was halted by the attack. As a result, revenues fell to 26 billion euro, down by more than a fifth compared with the previous 12 months. JLR also said sales were hit in China, where a huge number of local carmakers are introducing new products. JLR was not alone in struggling with tough conditions within the automotive industry. The Japanese manufacturer Honda on Thursday reported its first annual loss in 70 years as a listed company. Honda was forced to write off 8,5 billion euro in investments in electric cars after Trump removed subsidies for battery vehicles. PB Balaji, who took over as chief executive of JLR only a few weeks after the hack, said: “JLR faced a challenging year with revenue and profit affected by multiple headwinds, including a pause in production following the cyber incident”. However, he said the company “ended well” and had “come back resiliently”. He added that in the second half of this year the company would launch the delayed Range Rover Electric, as well as showing the first smaller electric SUVs and its new Jaguar EV, called the Type 01. The electric Range Rover had initially been planned for 2025, but was postponed amid weaker-than-expected demand for battery cars. Balaji declined to comment on Britain’s political turmoil, but he said it was crucial that the government reached an agreement with the EU to include UK carmakers in any new rules on “Made in Europe”. The rules, mainly designed to protect European industry from Chinese competition, could lock British carmakers out of EU incentives for EVs, putting them at a big post-Brexit disadvantage relative to factories in the bloc. “The challenges would be significant for the UK as well as EU manufacturers if we do not come up with a solution”, Balaji said. JLR makes its Range Rover and forthcoming Jaguar models in Solihull in the West Midlands and also produces its smaller SUVs such as the Discovery Sport in Halewood, Merseyside. Those models would be affected by the proposals to limit company cars to those made in the EU. The steep costs of the cyber-attack and investments in new models meant the carmaker burned through 2,55 billion euro of cash for the full year. However, JLR said it remained “resilient and well placed to address the geopolitical, inflationary and regulatory challenges the industry faces”, with 8 billion euro of available money it could draw on. +++
+++ MINI has “almost finished” work on a range of significant facelifts that will kick off a new era for the brand under design chief Holger Hampf. Hampf joined Mini from Designworks, BMW’s California-based design consultancy, in October 2024. But given how new the Mini range is (the Cooper and Countryman having launched in 2023, followed by the Aceman a year later), he has yet to have an opportunity to make his mark. In his first appearance with UK media, he told that “you will see my work in an upcoming LCI” (‘Life Cycle Impulse’ being the BMW Group’s code for a major model update). Hampf said this will be an “important milestone” for the brand, steered by “customer feedback from this generation”. Given the line-up is still relatively fresh, it is likely that a restyled Cooper and Countryman will arrive late next year, 4 years after they first arrived, and a new Aceman in 2028. Hampf added that brand collaborations such as the new Paul Smith edition of the Cooper and the previous Deus Ex Machina concept cars would become more important in keeping the line-up fresh, despite its limited breadth. “Short-term limited editions and collaborations will create some awareness and some appreciation for Mini”, he said. “It doesn’t always need to be an entirely new car; it’s a bit of storytelling and adapting the current products to lifestyles”. To this end, Hampf hinted that Mini is working on an off-road-focused variant of one of its existing models. “We’ve witnessed the trend of the outdoor lifestyle and driving out of the city to spend some days in nature”, he said. “Can our car do this? Certainly, so expect something in that direction”. This would most likely be based on the Countryman, given it is the only Mini currently available with four-wheel drive, and its raised ride height would lend itself naturally to such a “lifestyle” vehicle. While Hampf’s initial focus will be on facelifts, he did confirm that work has also begun on the next entirely new generation of Minis. These are expected to arrive in the early 2030s. John Cooper Works, Mini’s high-performance sub-brand, is expected to adopt more distinctive styling to further set its models apart from regular machines. Hampf said there was “air to the top” of the JCW range and drew a parallel with the differentiation between BMW’s M and M Competition sports cars, suggesting that a more extreme take on the hot hatch is in the works. This is, however, not expected to be a track-focused GP. “We’ve done something right in not only thinking of the GP, which we’ve done in the past”, he said. Hampf pointed to the collaboration with Deus as “one experiment” with JCW’s evolution, with “bigger tyres and bigger spoilers”. It is possible that, given “such positive response” from the public, toned-down versions of the 2 concept cars (The Skeg and The Machina) are being primed for production. JCW models enjoyed record success last year with 25,.630 sales, an increase of 59.5% compared with 2024. Mini pointed to the UK, Japan and Australia as being instrumental in this success. Mini brand boss Jean-Philippe Parain recently told that there are “still some possibilities” to expand the JCW offering, saying that it would push the hot hatches “very strongly”. +++
+++ VOLKSWAGEN will not launch the electric Golf until the end of the decade, CEO Thomas Schäfer has confirmed. Sources previously told Autocar that the EV, which is expected to be called ID.Golf, would be launched in 2028. However, Schäfer told: “We have a fantastic line-up now that we do not need an electric Golf in 2028. We are well set with what we have in our portfolio with our vehicles”. Volkswagen’s existing EV line-up will be joined this year by a new range of electric models that include the new ID.Polo, updated ID.3 Neo and incoming ID.Cross. Schäfer’s comments suggest the Golf EV’s later-than-expected launch is partly tactical to give these new arrivals some market exposure before the first electric version of its most popular and well-known model is launched. However, another reason, he hinted, was a further delay to the SSP platform that will underpin the Golf EV. The new architecture will form the basis of the next-generation of Volkswagen Group vehicles and Volkswagen Group CEO Oliver Blume previously claimed it would bring price parity between ICE and EV models. The platform will also feature 800V electricals, more advanced battery technology and a new software architecture developed in collaboration with Rivian. It was originally pencilled in to arrive this year, but it has been delayed by development issues and now the first vehicles to use it won’t be launched until 2028. The electric Golf was to be one of these cars. However, Schäfer confirmed that the first VW Group vehicles to use the platform will now be from its Audi and Porsche premium brands. He said: “SSP, we will roll it out across the VW Group brands. We will start with the premium brands first… It will start with Audi, then Porsche, then us VW and on and on”. Speaking about why the platform has taken so long to arrive, he said: “It sounds like we take so long, but for us we are looking at scale and you have to have scale in this game or you’ll never make margin parity”. Schäfer added that “increased competition”, especially from new Chinese brands, has forced a rethink of EV pricing, meaning the group had to “redo the maths” regarding platform costs in terms of materials and investment. The news comes just a few months after the first official image of the 9th-generation Volkswagen Golf was released, as well as the confirmation that the EV will be built at the car maker’s Wolfsburg factory in Germany. Production of the combustion-powered car, which will be heavily updated at the same time as the EV arrives, will move to Mexico. +++
+++ VOLVO isn’t expecting a big future for monthly subscriptions for car features, despite some brands moving into that arena as technology develops, according to the firm’s chief executive Håkan Samuelsson. Samuelsson downplayed the revenue potential of hiding features behind monthly paywalls. “I think you need to be a bit careful and not believe that this is where you get extra revenues”, he said, instead prioritising customers getting access to the best possible tech at purchase. “I think our main philosophy is to develop a car with very good software and a lot of good features that will impress customers, that will make them really love your brand and buy your car,” Samuelsson continued. “If customers have to pay extra for a lot of features, I think you will just have fewer customers trying them and you will not build your brand as strongly as you should”. But Volvo’s chief did point to opportunities for subscription offerings around elements such as the driver-safety Pilot Assist function, as well as adding and activating newer features to older cars where the tech wasn’t available at launch. That will be easier going forward into the era of software-developed cars, where systems across the vehicle are better interconnected to allow more over-the-air updates, for example. Brands such as BMW and Volkswagen have previously dabbled with offering features such as heated seats, adaptive cruise control and even power upgrades, but it’s yet to become more widespread. +++