Geely RADAR electric ute previewed in official teaser shots

The Geely Group’s first all-electric pick-up has been previewed officially via a new set of camouflaged teaser images posted to Twitter last week, indicating the Chinese-made ute will in fact be sold under the Geely brand name and not ‘RADAR’.

RADAR will instead be the vehicle’s model name – making it the 2023 Geely RADAR – and while the model year is yet to be locked in, a mid-2022 launch for the teaser campaign is a strong indication of a subsequent 2023 release.

Very few details of the new EV ute have been released as yet, but it’s rumoured to be underpinned by the same dedicated electric monocoque platform, dubbed SEA, as the upcoming Polestar 4 and Lotus Eletre SUVs, meaning power figures well north of 400kW should be possible.

The SEA platform will simultaneously allow for a wide range of powertrain variants to materialise given it is capable of supporting both single- and dual-motor drivetrains, the latter of which inevitably yields all-wheel drive.

Roughly the size of a Toyota HiLux but lacking a rugged ladder frame and the same amount of ground clearance, the camouflaged Geely RADAR looks like it will be more of a lifestyle ute than an all-out workhorse.

That’s something hammered home by the context of the teaser images, which show the zero-emission pick-up being used as a support vehicle for a pair of recreational cyclists.

With Geely partnering with National Geographic to help promote what could eventually become a RADAR sub-brand, there’s little doubt more capable versions will come along at some point, however.

For the time being, we only have these four teaser shots which reveal a largely enclosed (aerodynamic) front-end save for the pair of air-dams at either end of the front bumper.

However, several images of an uncamouflaged gold-coloured Radar ute have also been published across multiple Chinese websites over the last few days. We can’t verify the authenticity of them, but they do suggest the new EV ute will offer at least some utilitarian goodies including vehicle-to-load (V2L) functionality via a port in the tray.

The LED headlight and daytime running light clusters look as if they’ve been pinched off the front of the outgoing Volkswagen Amarok and then shrunk in the wash, with the DRLs linked by a bridging piece of chrome trim.

That full-width motif is replicated at the back by X-shaped tail-light clusters and a full-width braking light strip, mirrored at the bottom of the tailgate by a sharp contour crease.

Below that resides what some might consider confirmation of the car’s identity as a Geely and not a RADAR: etched ‘GEELY’ lettering.

We can’t be too sure this will be the case though as the tweet accompanying the images was fairly ambiguous in its nature, reading: “First look at RADAR pickup truck”.

The caption is neither here nor there in its terms the naming, but we expect Geely to employ a similar naming and model strategy as Hyundai with its blooming IONIQ portfolio, with RADAR serving as the overarching family name, which in this case would make the mystery ute the 2023 Geely RADAR pick-up… for the time being.

It’s no secret Australia is a ute-obsessed market and that interest in electric vehicles is rising at an exponential rate, so it would be reasonable to expect the first Geely RADAR product to make its way Down Under at some stage – especially so given the Polestar, Volvo and Lotus brands are all offered here and owned by the Geely Group.

Related: RADAR electric ute leaked

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