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In the starting blocks
: The Wey Coffee 01 is scheduled to hit the streets in Germany in 2022
Photo: MICHAELA REHLE / REUTERS
The Chinese automobile manufacturer Great Wall Motor will start in Germany later this year.
As the company announced on Monday evening, the Ora Funky Cat and Wey Coffee 01 models should hit the streets in this country in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Great Wall chose a powerful partner for imports from China: the Emil Frey Group.
The Swiss are considered the largest car dealership in Europe.
Most recently, the company with its 680 locations sold well over half a million vehicles a year, around 130,000 of them in Germany.
In Germany, the group operates around 80 car dealerships, markets cars from more than 28 manufacturers and also already acts as an importer of the Mitsubishi and Subaru brands.
Now Great Wall Motor joins them.
The Chinese have been negotiating with the Swiss since the beginning of 2020, and now there has been a breakthrough.
Germany will be the pilot market for the new partners in Europe.
Both sides are currently still talking about starting in other European countries.
Great Wall Motor had already announced its European ambitions at the IAA Mobility in Munich.
So far, company boss
Wei Jianjun
- stage name Jack Wey - had flirted with direct sales models to the outside world.
Now, at least in Germany, things are different.
Probably also because European car buyers are more conservative than Chinese ones, buying vehicles online is still far less common here.
"For me, whether the Chinese will prevail is not a question of technology, but of sales," an expert on Chinese brands recently told manager magazin.
At the start there will be a purely electric car with the Ora Funky Cat and a plug-in hybrid with the Wey Coffee 01.
In the current year, Emil Frey wants to sell a total of around 3,000 units in Germany, and the importer is hoping for more than 15,000 in 2023.
Then the Chinese manufacturer's range for local customers should also be broader.
In the third quarter of 2022, Great Wall Motor intends to present a "comprehensive and technologically leading range of vehicles for the European market".
More details will probably be given at the Paris Motor Show in October.
BYD is also ready
Shortly after BYD, Great Wall Motor is the next Chinese car manufacturer to announce its launch in Germany later this year.
Both are taking a similar path, BYD is cooperating with the Swedish retail giant Hedin to get started here and in Sweden.
Cars from Chinese brands are still a rarity in Germany.
But the spread has recently increased.
According to the Federal Motor Transport Authority, almost 7,000 such new cars hit the road in the first seven months, the market share was just under 0.5 percent.
Primus is MG Roewe with 4849 new registrations in the current year - the brand is on par with well-known names like Honda and has already left other traditional manufacturers like Subaru or Alfa Romeo behind.
Great Wall Motor has been around since 1984. Last year, the manufacturer sold around 1.28 million new cars, and the Haval brand is particularly well represented at home.
Outside of China, Great Wall says it is already active in over 60 countries.
The group with over 100 subsidiaries employs more than 60,000 people.
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