Haval throws its weight behind electric future

Chinese automaker Great Wall Motors announced its leading SUV brand, Haval, is joining the new energy vehicle market as the segment ushers in explosive growth domestically.

Haval is aiming for 80 percent of its sales to be NEVs by 2025 and will officially halt the sales of fuel-powered vehicles by 2030, the brand said at its new energy strategy conference held in Beijing last week.

Haval is the second domestic brand to make such pledges after BYD stopped production and sales of fuel vehicles in March.

Great Wall's self-developed Lemon Dedicated Hybrid Transmission platform will play the main role in driving Haval's new energy transformation.

The platform, launched in 2020, is based on a hybrid system and can realize two power setups of a hybrid electric vehicle and a plugin hybrid electric vehicle with three different sets of powertrains.

Haval launched the third-generation H6 DHT and started presales of DHT-PHEV variants at the conference on Aug 22, as the brand's first models in the NEV market.

The best-selling SUV of Haval, the H6, has sold 3.8 million units over the past 11 years. It used to be the best-seller in the internal combustion SUV segment for years. But with a higher proportion of NEVs being sold and a rise in oil prices, sales of the H6 showed a downward trend.

From January to July, the Haval H6 sold 147,870 units, ranking second among all SUVs sold in China, according to data released by the China Passenger Car Association earlier this month. That's a 30.7 percent decrease compared with same period of 2021.

An industry analyst said that Great Wall Motor is seen as being slow to transition at a time when China's NEV industry is growing rapidly while sales of its best-selling Haval brand have shown weakness.

Great Wall Motors is aware of the situation too. The president of Great Wall Motors Mu Feng said Haval's transformation shows that Great Wall Motors' new energy strategy has been launched.

The carmaker has focused on hybrid, pure electric and hydrogen technologies to develop NEV products. In 2021, the carmaker invested around 10 billion yuan ($1.46 billion) on research and development. The investment will reach 100 billion yuan by 2025.

The carmaker also said it will establish a company to serve Haval's NEV business.