Chery ripe for roll out in Victoria?

Chery's local distributor in Australia, Ateco Automotive, is no closer to overcoming the hurdle that blocks sales of the Chinese brand in Victoria, but spokesman Daniel Cotterill is confident the problem will be solved before long.

The matter arose when the Victorian government unilaterally introduced legislation mandating stability control for passenger cars sold in the state from January last year. Nationwide, the equivalent legislation (ADR 31/02) did not come into force until November of last year. And there was a sunset clause allowing importers and distributors to continue selling existing models of cars without the safety feature through to November 2013.

Chery, in conjunction with Ateco, committed to selling cars in Australia prior to the introduction of the Victorian legislation, but no cars were landed in Australia and the dealer network wasn't set up prior to the Victorian rule taking effect. It left Ateco and Chery no choice but to ignore the Victorian market until such time as the manufacturer could offer stability control in its cars.

"They're working on it," Daniel Cotterill told motoring.com.au when we asked for an update. "We'd obviously very much like them to have it available for cars that we could import to this country, but they haven't got it yet."

There's no word as to when that might be, although Cotterill is confident the company will have compliant vehicles reaching Australia before the ADR 31/02 sunset clause comes into force at the end of next year. Says Cotterill, Australia is the only market that imposes the standard stability control requirement on the Chinese company.

"To put it into perspective, the vast majority of Chery's market is [Chinese] domestic or exports to countries — and none of that requires ESC [Electronic Stability Control] for them, either now or for the foreseeable future. We're the only market they have that is asking them to do this — and they're doing it, but it's a tricky thing to... integrate properly into the vehicle. It's not just a bolt-on accessory; it needs to be fully integrated into the whole body computer and management system to work properly."

That suggests that developing stability control may not be a priority when Chery can sell as many cars as it can build in other markets.

"Well they do have to do it," replied Cotterill. "It won't be wasted effort for them. They've committed to sell their cars in Australia... and sooner or later... any domestic product is going to have to compete against cars that are fitted with that technology..."

As Cotterill explained it, Chery products on sale in China are facing rivals that may already offer stability control. These, more often than not, are the products of joint ventures set up with input from European, Japanese and American companies — with the runs on the board for the development and roll-out of safety technology like stability control.

"That would be regardless of any legislative requirement the Chinese [government may put in place]," Cotterill also pointed out. But things may move faster now that Chery has entered into its own joint venture agreement with Jaguar Land Rover.

The Ateco executive doesn't foresee a long wait for Victorian dealers to begin selling Chery models following the introduction of cars that meet the ADR 31/02 requirement.

"Once we had the vehicles available to us, we could set up quite quickly. It would be a case of months. Our network development people are very experienced; obviously we've done all the homework as to where we'd like to be down there; and have preliminary discussions in some instances, as to quite specifically where we'd like to be."

"I think we'd get that market activated quite quickly. That's certainly been the case everywhere else we are."

The Victorian quandary must cause Ateco some heartburn, although Cotterill is careful to downplay the impact of the decision and its timing.

"We had some quite interesting and detailed discussions with Victorian regulators, when this came to pass — and it wasn't a situation that anyone had envisaged, when the legislation was mooted. They didn't think about new market entrants. We're not saying there is anything particularly wrong with that, but it was just one that left everyone looking at each other, scratching their heads.

Ultimately, Victoria is an important region in Ateco's plans for Chery.

"It's the second most populous market in Australia; we'd like to be there now," Cotterill said.

Read the latest news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at carsales' mobile site...