New premium EV brand AVATR heading to Australia, New Zealand likely to follow
Words: Richard Edwards
AVATR, a Chinese premium electric brand, is set to launch in Australia with a large SUV called the 07L. Pre-orders open there before the end of 2026, with first deliveries early in 2027.
New Zealand should follow, though nothing has been confirmed.
“Most likely, no confirmed dates, but our Australian rollout is normally followed by a New Zealand rollout,” Changan Group Australia head of brand and marketing Andrew Haurissa told NZ Autocar.
Who sells it here is still open. Haurissa says the company is in discussions with several parties and has not decided whether to appoint a local distributor or run the market itself.
“It is still being discussed at the moment, but we’re talking with multiple entities. We haven’t conclusively made a decision.”
He would not say who is in those discussions. A New Zealand team is being put together out of the Australian business, and he says that team will pick the launch timing. There is no date.
Australian buyers will get there sooner. Haurissa says dealers will be appointed before the end of this year, and that they will be existing multi-franchise operators rather than standalone AVATR sites. The brand will run separately from Deepal, the other Changan brand already on sale in Australia.
“AVATR sits above Deepal within the Changan Group,” Haurissa says. “It’s actually a joint venture with CATL, so we have to launch that separately.”
The Car
AVATR has not released local specification. The 07L went on sale in China in August, so the figures below are the Chinese ones.
It is a five-seat SUV, 4,910 mm long on a 2,990 mm wheelbase, so about the size of a BMW X5. Boot space is 735 litres, or 1,645 litres with the rear seats down, and there is another 100 litres under the bonnet.
The rear-drive version has a single motor making 305 kW and takes 5.9 seconds to reach 100 km/h. The Ultra runs three motors, one front and two rear, for 712 kW and 996 Nm, which cuts that to 3.7 seconds. Both top out at 200 km/h.
Chinese cars come with air suspension, a 35.4-inch screen set below the windscreen, nine airbags and powered doors. The Ultra adds 21-inch wheels and four-piston Brembo front brakes.
The Battery
Every version uses the same 89.33 kWh battery, supplied by CATL. That is less of a coincidence than it looks, because CATL helped found AVATR and still holds a stake in it.
Changan set the brand up in 2018 with CATL and Huawei. Changan builds the cars, CATL supplies the batteries and Huawei provides much of the electronics and driver assistance.
The pack is CATL’s Shenxing lithium iron phosphate design, rated for 5C charging. On the car’s 800-volt system and a fast enough charger, that gets you from 30 to 80% in under 10 minutes.
Claimed range is 725 km for the rear-drive cars and 650 km for the tri-motor, both on China’s CLTC cycle. CLTC is a good deal softer than the WLTP standard used here, so local figures will land lower.
The Brand
AVATR builds in Chongqing and has been selling at home since the AVATR 11 arrived in 2022. The 07, which this longer 07L replaces, has sold about 86,500 in China since late 2024.
The design studio is in Munich, run by Nader Faghihzadeh, who spent years at BMW and was responsible for the 6 Series.
The car coming here will be right-hand drive, a first for the brand.
Still Unknown
Local battery, range, power and charging figures have not been confirmed for either market, and there is no pricing. AVATR says driver assistance will depend on local certification, so the Chinese car’s systems will not necessarily carry over as they are.
