Chery Australia is prioritising improvements to its driver assistance software over local hardware tuning as it works to make its cars more suitable for local conditions.
While some carmakers develop local suspension and steering tunes for their vehicles to make them better-suited for Australia’s unique road conditions, Chery says it plans to invest in those areas down the line.
In the meantime, its focus remains on improving the calibration of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) such as driver monitoring, adaptive cruise control and lane-keep assist.
Chery Australia chief operating officer, Lucas Harris has previously admitted that the brand got off to a rocky start with its Australian relaunch in 2023, after widespread criticism of the calibration of its ADAS technology.
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At the launch of the new Omoda E5, Mr Harris told CarExpert that it will be easier to address those criticisms in the short term, before introducing hardware upgrades.
“Dynamic handling, steering and suspension takes a long time to test and make changes. Things like ADAS and DMS are just software, so the lead cycles to make improvements are a lot shorter,” said Mr Harris.
“When those driver aid systems aren’t good, it’s obvious to consumers. Dynamic handling has to be really bad for a regular consumer to know.
“Our focus is on those driver aids because that’s what most people are going to feel really quickly, straight away. And it happens to be much faster for us to solve.
“Things like dynamic handling we’re working on, we’re talking to the factory all the time, but it’s probably going to be the next generation of models when you see those improvements come through.”
Chery is fleshing out its namesake brand’s lineup this year, before introducing the separate Jaecoo brand early next year.
Having addressed some teething issues since the re-launch of Chery Down Under, Mr Harris expects a smoother introduction for Jaecoo.
“I think we learned some good lessons with Chery around local testing and tuning, that was a speed bump for us in the beginning and Jaecoo will benefit from that,” explained Mr Harris.
“We are overcoming those issues now and our volume is growing a lot.
“Jaecoo won’t have that speed bump, so we expect it to get off to a faster start from the beginning.”
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