GWM Cannon Alpha Ultra PHEV 2025 Review

There are two GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV variants available in Australia: the $59,990 Lux and the $66,990 Ultra we’re testing here. All pricing excludes on-road costs.

The only direct rival for the Cannon Alpha PHEV on-sale right now is the BYD Shark 6 that’s priced at $57,900 plus on-road costs.

Incoming shortly is the Ford Ranger PHEV which will start from $71,990 for the entry-level XLT and climb all the way to $86,990 for the Stormtrak. Prices are again plus ORCs.

Among leading diesel dual cab 4x4 utes, the Cannon Alpha PHEV Ultra lines up most closely on price against the Ford Ranger Sport 2.0 ($66,140), Toyota HiLux SR5 48V mild hybrid ($63,260) and Isuzu D-Max 3.0 X-Terrain.

There are also diesel and plugless hybrid Cannon Alphas available from just $51,990 drive-away, not to mention the – recently updated – standard Cannon turbo-diesel.

The 2025 GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV is very well-equipped.

Externally, both grades share black pack appointments (other Alphas get chrome) including the grille, 18-inch wheels, roof rails, side steps and even doorhandles.

Smart keyless entry reveals push button start, powered front seats and dual-zone climate control with rear vents.

The Ultra alone upgrades to a split 60:40 tailgate (more on that later), a powered sliding rear window, a panoramic sunroof, leather accented seats (upgraded from faux leather), extra power adjustments and memory and massage functions for the front seats and power adjustability for the rear outboard pews.

Heating and ventilation applies to front and rear outboard seats, and heating to the steering wheel.

The only options fitted to our test vehicle was a $1239 wired towbar, while premium paint is $595. There are four colours and only white doesn’t cost extra.

Because the high voltage battery consumes so much space under the car, the full-size spare (steel) wheel is bolted into the tray. It’s a no-cost option developed locally, the cover fitted to the tyre blew off at speed – GWM says a fix is coming for production examples.

The Cannon Alpha PHEV is covered by the same seven-year unlimited kilometre warranty as the rest of the Cannon range, backed up by seven years roadside assist and a capped price servicing program that averages out at about $650 each for the first five visits.

That’s about double what you’d pay for diesel Ranger or Toyota HiLux over the same number of services.

The warranty for the Cannon Alpha PHEV’s 37.11kWh NMC high voltage battery meantime is the obligatory eight years.

The 2025 GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV has been confirmed as qualifying for the same five-star ANCAP safety rating as the rest of its stablemates, though it actually have to be crashed again. Instead, it was based on information supplied to ANCAP by GWM – a common procedure when updates of previously crashed vehicles arrive.

Safety equipment shared by both PHEV models includes seven airbags (a centre airbag is fitted), a 360-degree camera with clear chassis view, LED headlights, a multitude of front and rear parking sensors, tyre pressure monitoring, trailer sway mitigation and two top tether and ISOFIX mounts in the rear seat.

The big-ticket driver assist items include autonomous emergency braking with junction assist and pedestrian and cyclist detection, adaptive cruise control, traffic sign recognition, various forms of lane keeping and change assist, blind spot monitoring, rear cross traffic alert and brake and driver fatigue monitoring.

We’ll make some observations about some of these systems work in the driving section below.

Laudably, the Lux only misses out on a few safety-related items compared to the Ultra. They include auto parking assist and auto reverse assist, which drives backwards precisely on the path you’ve just come hands and feet free.

The Ultra also adds an auto-dimming rear view mirror and LED foglights with steering input.

The 2025 GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV is awash in screens. There’s a 14.6-inch infotainment touchscreen sitting on the dashboard and a 12.3-inch digital instrument panel for the driver.

Just in case an Ultra driver doesn’t feel like they’re information overload yet, there's also a large head-up display projected onto the windscreen.

Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard offerings, as are embedded satellite-navigation, Bluetooth and DAB, FM and AM radio. The latter is laudable, given its importance for safety bulletins in emergencies in regional areas.

There are front and rear USB-A outlets and a dash cam USB port.

The Alpha PHEV provides Vehicle to Load (V2L), which allows the high voltage battery to be accessed via a plug and power board to provide up to 6kW of electricity to run tools and camping gear.

The Alpha also has access to GWM’s connected car telematics which provides the ability to – among other things – remotely lock/unlock the vehicle, turn on the climate control, activate seat heating and check key vehicle status like the fuel and charge levels.

The Ultra upgrades from the Lux’s six-speaker sound system to a 10-speaker Infinity set-up, adds 64-clour ambient lighting that puts on quite the show and front and rear wireless charging pads.

The 2025 GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV employs GWM’s Hi4-T plug-in hybrid system designed for heavy-duty labour and off-road work.

This design includes a 2.0-litre turbo-petrol engine, an e-motor integrated into the nine-speed automatic transmission, a BorgWarner torque-on-demand permanent 4x4 system with low range and the high-voltage battery.

The combined output of the system is a meaty 300kW/750Nm, enough to spring from 0-100km/h in a claimed 6.9 seconds – with the help of launch control! – despite the whole shooting match weighing in at just over 2800kg.

The system can run purely as an EV if there’s enough battery charge and as a hybrid where both the engine and e-motor drive the system.

You can either nominate EV or HEV (depending on battery life) modes specifically or go with Smart/Intelligent mode (it’s called different things depending on which screen you look at) and have it do it itself.

In our testing the battery never fully depleted (despite our best efforts), so there was always electricity onboard to help with performance.

You can also set state of charge battery levels yourself if you wish. For example, if you’re headed off camping and want to preserve battery power for your BBQ.

To aid off-road capability there are front, centre and rear differential locks along with hill descent control as standard.

Unsurprisingly there are multiple driving modes to wrap your head around: Normal, Sport and Economy for on-road, plus 4Hi (which locks the centre diff for a 50:50 torque split) and 4Lo for off-road.

The 2025 GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV claims an eye-popping 1.7L/100km fuel consumption average when the battery is charged and 7.9L/100km when it’s depleted.

Its official electricity consumption claim is 30.3kWh/100km, which is pretty high.

One 20km run in heavy traffic with the battery charged returned a 1.6L/100km fuel consumption average and 34.1kWh/100km electricity consumption (according to the trip computer) – so the numbers aren’t entirely fanciful.

However, let the battery charge deplete – it can’t run alone below about 15 per cent – and you’re going to start chewing the fuel.

Our average came out at 9.5L/100km on one long run and that’s not going to match a lot of diesel utes. Another run showed up at an unhappy 13L/100km.

GWM also says the Cannon Alpha PHEV has a 115km EV range and 1060km combined range based on the loose NEDC protocol.

In the real world the battery delivered a 77km range on a test loop that included a lot of open road driving and a stint at 110km/h on the freeway.

That’s a pretty decent result and promising if you can keep the battery charged up for round town runs at lower speeds.

You might go weeks without the engine running much and that will save you a heap of fuel cost.

We just wish the Alpha was better at recharging its battery on the run. Instead, it showed limited ability in this regard – its regenerative braking system has some adjustment, but it’s limited and only through the touchscreen. There are no Hyundai/Kia-style flappy paddles.

So keeping the battery topped off means overnight AC charging at up to 6.5kW or dropping in to your local DC fast-charging station for a quick fill. GWM claims the Cannon Alpha can be recharged at up to 50kW in these instances, and we can verify that.

The internal combustion engine meantime uses the cheapest 91 RON fuel and has a 75-litre tank, so a reasonable range is on offer.

So let’s talk numbers and when it comes to the GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV, some of them are very interesting.

For starters, it measures identically to the diesel and hybrid Alphas at 5445mm long, 1991mm wide and 1924mm tall with the same long 3350mm wheelbase.

Where it diverges from its siblings is in weight. It’s a bloody heavy sucker at 2810kg.

This in turn has an impact on the payload, which is limited to 685kg, compared to as much as 821kg for the diesel and 735kg for the hybrid.

None of these are great numbers compared to orthodox diesel utes that regularly manage 1000kg-plus payloads, and crucially, the Shark 6 is also better at a claimed 790kg.

GWM’s argument here is it would rather have a larger, heavier battery and extended EV range than the extra payload.

The tray measures up at 1520mm wide, 1500mm long and 500mm deep, but the maximum 1100mm width between the wheel arches means an Aussie pallet (1165mm x 1165mm) doesn’t fit.

There’s a spray-in tub liner which is preferred to a drop-in unit because there’s no chance of water getting underneath and rust forming. LED lighting and four hooks are included, but one of the hooks is blocked by the spare tyre if it is installed.

One of the Ultra’s party tricks is its split tailgate. A short press of an external button allows it to swing out in two pieces while a long press lowers like an orthodox tailgate. On our test car the rubberised press button had a tendency to jam on its housing halting the process, which lessened our enthusiasm for the whole concept.

The dampening struts on the tailgate are more helpful. Corner steps into the tub would also be appreciated, or even a pop-out step like the lesser Cannon has.

One of the strongest claims GWM makes for the Alpha PHEV is its retention of 3500kg braked towing capacity, which does make it competitive against the Ranger, Hilux and co. It’s also 1000kg higher than the Shark 6.

But crunch the numbers and the payload when towing at maximum capacity is just 335kg. So that’s all you’ve got to work with for passengers, luggage, vehicle accessories and so on, and towing at 3000kg only bumps it up to 385kg.

Reading back through a review of the 2024 GWM Cannon Alpha Hybrid is to realise how much detailed tuning improvement has been achieved in a short time.

The PHEV still retains some annoying traits, but it is positively gentrified compared to its over-weening, bing-bonging, lecturing plugless relation.

Sure, if you’re like me with a low tolerance for such things, the PHEV still needs its lane keeping, overspeed alert and driver monitoring switched off, but the interference levels seem calmer and the shortcut button to driver assist functions on the centre console is of some help when drilling down.

The driver-monitoring lecture has been deleted, but sadly the system remains too sensitive to eye movement away from the straight ahead. The adaptive cruise control (“pay attention”) admonishment that makes itself heard every time it is activated or deactivated is unfortunately retained.

The cruise control’s minimum distance to the car in front seems to have been reduced slightly, which is handy because it was far too conservative previously. Now it’s just conservative.

Even the soft-touch indicators seem to cancel more easily than before, so you less often drive in a straight line alternately indicating left and right after over-correcting with the stalk. It still happens a bit though!

This all represents a step in the right direction which will hopefully accelerate now that ex-Holden guru Rob Trubianai is in the house working on this stuff.

As for the actual driving, the powertrain is the big thing here, obviously, and it is a fascinating bit of gear to deal with.

It does have genuine EV-only range. As we reported earlier, it managed 77km on a combination of urban, freeway, highway and country roads.

With an indicated 14 per cent of battery capacity still to be consumed it swapped to hybrid mode.

A key observation here is that, even in EV mode, the engine does chime in to provide bursts of support when you plant the throttle, and without that backing, the initial strong electric response quickly tails off.

Left to its own devices in Hybrid or Smart modes, the interaction between the two sides of the powertrain is pretty seamless. The arrival of gearchanges when the petrol engine is in use is as much evidence it is running as combustion noise.

It doesn’t spend a lot of time revving obviously out of sync recharging the battery like the Nissan e-Power system does.

It’s clearly a stronger powertrain overall than the diesel and better calibrated than the hybrid with the obvious influence of the EV-side significantly reducing tip-in throttle hesitancies.

Apart from the obvious powertrain changes compared to the diesel and hybrid Cannon Alpha models, the PHEV also swaps from leaf springs to more compact coil springs at the rear to accommodate the high voltage battery pack.

It retains a live axle at the rear and double wishbones up-front, all underpinned by a traditional ute ladder-frame.

Even the leaf-sprung Cannon Alphas have a soft rear-end and the coil-sprung PHEV continues the tradition – unladen it can be a bit bouncy and offer some frame shake in that typical ute way, but it’s not unpleasant.

Add 325kg into the tray and the rear sags noticeably and bites into the road more substantially. The front-end rises and feels less connected, but the electric-assist steering is slow but low in effort whether you have a load onboard or not, irrespective of which of the three modes are selected. Sport mode does add some weight.

Despite its added weight the PHEV actually feels a bit more manoeuvrable than other Cannon Alphas previously tested, suggesting some extra tuning work has gone in.

For such a sizable and heavy vehicle, it is well contained and stable. Its torque-on-demand 4x4 system helps here, essentially meaning all-wheel drive is available at all times, unlike traditional part-time 4x4 utes that have to be driven in two-wheel drive on-road.

Even on greasy, rough corners it didn’t easily break away when the throttle was applied – the Giti tyres don’t have much of a reputation, but they behaved okay.

The 2025 GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV Ultra didn’t need the front diff locked to happily chug up and over the carsales moguls climb – just 4hi and the rear diff lock engaged.

The hill descent control was less impressive as there seems no to be way to adjust the speed and it felt a little too high speed for me.

Ground clearance is an acceptable 210mm, the approach angle is 28.5 degrees, breakover 19 degrees and departure angle 23 degrees, the turning circle is 13m and the wading depth is 800mm.

The side skirts were the only part of the car we consistently touched down.

GWM is at pains to tell us that it has already modified the towbar design to lift its overall height 70mm when fitted.

On gravel roads the Cannon Alpha sat securely and handled predictably.

Like the driving experience, the interior of the 2025 GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV has some fussy and irritating details overlaying the fundamental goodness.

That goodness boils down to lots and lots of space and lots and lots of features.

There is no ute this side of the full-size Yank tanks that look after rear seat passengers better. Space is incredibly generous. You can even adjust the front passenger seat from the rear to create more space.

Then there’s the gear. Powered reclining outboard seats for crying out loud, plus heating, ventilation and even a wireless phone charger.

The expected stuff is there too, like air vents, USB ports and lots of storage options. They include sliding drawers under the seats and even a couple of pockets on the back of the tri-part fold down seatback.

Up-front the seats are commodious, plush and fully featured. The lack of a power adjustable steering column is a slightly curious omission.

The presentation of the cabin – especially the scratchy fake wood across the dashboard – is… interesting. And the ambient lighting can be positively disco in its hyperactivity.

At least it all appears to be stitched and bolted together well in that usual Chinese way.

Storage is good. Door pockets and the cooled lidded bin are sizable. There’s a handy oddments area down on the driver’s side of the transmission tunnel where USB-As are somewhat hidden away.

The wireless charger isn’t cooled and not especially powerful, but it is conveniently located in the centre console.

We’ve already run through a bunch of ways GWM has tried to make life more pleasant for Cannon Alpha PHEV passengers, but sadly it’s also tripped up a bit in the process.

Essentially, GWM hasn’t taken into account smartphone apps. So if you want to access the shortcut to driver assist systems you first have to exit the app you’re most likely in (CarPlay in our case) and get back to the GWM homescreen… so there’s plenty of fiddling.

Then there’s volume control – you can do that off the steering wheel, voice control or via a swipe down menu. But again in the case of the latter, you have to exit smartphone mirroring to access that via the GWM homescreen.

This menu also contains shortcuts for adjusting navigation volume, accessing cameras, turning the screen off, activating intelligent parking and much more. But again, fiddle, fiddle.

Can we please just have a physical volume button the dash?

The third way smartphone mirroring interferes with basic operations is setting the air-con temperature. There are physical buttons for fan speed but not temp – more fiddling to get to the homescreen.

Sheesh.

Beyond this faffing about, there are lots and lots of sub menus in the touchscreen with a huge amount of tuning. A lot of it is a distracting waste of time, taking your attention away from the primary purpose of driving the car.

To add insult, CarPlay froze several times and at other times, the navigation (both Google and Apple Maps) placed the car about 130km from where we were actually located. But at least the embedded sat-nav performed perfectly when called upon.

If you’re not wedded to the idea of a plug-in hybrid electric ute then the GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV might be a hard sell because of its reduced payload.

But in other ways it’s got a lot going for it. It has significant zero emissions running capability as long as you keep the battery charged, real off-road ability and that 3500kg braked towing limit (with those payload limitations noted).

On top of that, the pricing is pretty darn good considering the enormous amount of gear you’re going to get for the money.

What it boils down to is this; the GWM Cannon Alpha Ultra PHEV is another pretty decent attempt at presenting us with a new way to look at utes. It’s not perfect, but it’s got features that some of us are going to find appealing.

Personally, I’d probably forsake the Ultra’s luxuries and opt for the more basic Lux. It’s got the same fundamental capability and it keeps a heap more money in your pocket.

2025 GWM Cannon Alpha Ultra PHEV at a glance:
Price: $66,990 (plus on-road costs)
Available: Now
Powertrain: 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbocharged petrol-electric plug-in
Output: 180kW/380Nm (electric motor: 120kW/400Nm)
Combined output: 300kW/750Nm
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Battery: 37.11kWh Ternary Lithium
Range: 1060km (NEDC)
Energy consumption: 30.3 kWh/100km (ADR)
Fuel: 1.7L/100km (ADR)
CO2: 39g/km (ADR)
Safety rating: Five-star (ANCAP 2024)

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