Electric Ute Revolution
Finally an electric vehicle coming to Australia, an electric pickup truck, an electric ute.
This is likely to be the first electric truck or electric pickup truck electric ute in Australia, New Zealand and Thailand in the next year.
Unveiling the Future
And the reason is this new report revealing right hand drive production is beginning.
Australia is in line to get well, not just Australia, I should say Australia, New Zealand, possibly Japan, but more likely Thailand because people love pickup trucks and utes in Thailand.
Targeting the Australasian Market
Number one best selling car number one best selling type of vehicle in Thailand. Also that I’m my best selling type of vehicle in Australia, possibly the UK as well.
And the reason that we know this is going to happen is because, well, Geely had begun making the radar D6 in right hand drive and you don’t make a current right hand driver if you’re only going to sell it in one country.
Otherwise you would just lose immense amounts of money. Clearly, Geely is a global car company, they sell cars in most countries around the world and that’s their plan. Sell a pickup truck, which they don’t really have.
Pricing and Availability
Well they do, they have a Chinese one, the radar D6, which is pretty good. It’s just been upgraded, it now has better towing.
It can tow a lot more than what it could previously. I think it’s about three tons now for the four wheel drive version.
The four wheel drive version is significantly better than it was before in terms of its payload capacity.
That’s been improved now to about one ton as well. So Geely have plans to actually bring this electric car to numerous countries.
They’re making a right hand drive, which is great. Geely announced over the weekend that it’s going to name change as well.
It was unveiled in China two years ago. It sold for price, a staggeringly low price of 25,000 USD in China. But that’s the rear wheel drive version.
The all wheel drive version is a bit more expensive, it’s around about 33,000 USD. It’s still very cheap. There’s only 50,000 AUD.
And here’s what Geely said, it will be available in your market soon. That’s what they’ve said on their global social media channels.
Specifications and Features
The Chinese car giant has, revealed a new name for the vehicles. Well, I don’t like it. I think they should have stuck with radar, but there is a reason that they didn’t.
There’s a Singapore company, a Thai company that sells tires called radar in various different countries.
So rather than trying to fight with this Thai company over naming rights, they’ve just decided, let’s just change the name of the brand.
On the bonnet you can see it says radar ID six, and the name has been changed to Radar, it’s been trademarked by Geely in China and in Australia.
So they’ve trademarked this vehicle in Australia. That’s a pretty damn good reason to believe it’s coming here and hopefully very soon.
According to a new website for the brand, which appears to have been designed by an Australian software company, radar is an international pickup truck brand owned by Radar Auto.
So yeah, it’s just been renamed. That means it’s been reserved for export markets. Here’s what Julie said.
There are plans for global markets, but we can’t comment on when it’s coming. So that’s that’s the issue here, we don’t know exactly when it’s coming, it is coming but we don’t know when.
In terms of size well it’s 5260mm long. So it’s a little bit shorter than say, a Ford Ranger. It’s a little bit a little bit shorter than a Toyota Hilux, about the same size as a Nissan Navara.
Dimension
So the Navara, you know, it’s big enough anyway, 5260mm long, 1900mm wide, 1865mm tall, wheelbase 3.1m.
it’s similar to a Hilux in terms of size, but just a little a little bit smaller. And the tray is around 1.5m long.
So as you can see, the tray is not overly big. But you know, in this segment it’s pretty well on part.
The tray is also 1425mm wide and 540 meters tall, so the tree is about 10% smaller than the tree in a Ford Ranger and a Toyota Hilux, but the passenger size apparently is meant to be bigger, so it’s meant to be sort of more of a car focused pickup truck, if that makes sense.
Battery
The radar website says that there is a couple of different battery options. One of them is a 63 kilowatt hour battery pack, so that’s the cheaper version of this vehicle.
The other one is an 86 kilowatt hour battery, and those are the battery packs that will go in this vehicle for overseas markets.
The smaller battery pack, it gives it 385km of range, the bigger battery 517km. So for me I’d want that longer range one, the 86 kilowatt hour pack.
I think 517km of range would be fine. And I know the real world range might be closer to 400, but that would be that would be pretty good for me.
In addition, it has a 200 kilowatt, 384 Newton meter rear motor. So that’s for the rear wheel drive version. But there is actually an all wheel drive version.
Competitive Landscape
Although the drive version has 315kW. So this would make it the most powerful vehicle, most powerful pickup truck in Australia and New Zealand, I believe.
And Thailand, 315kW, about 450 horsepower. It’ll do 0 to 100 in 4.5 seconds. That’s some that’s crazy fast. That’s way faster than the Ford Ranger Raptor, which is $100,000, 100,000 AUD.
That’s about 65,000 USD. Braked towing is three tons, so it tows 500 kilos less than the market leaders, which is still pretty good.
Wading depth is 815mm, it has 220mm of ground clearance, a maximum payload of around 770kg, and all in all, I think this would be a great first vehicle.
I think the strongest competitor for this vehicle will be the LDV electric pickup truck, which they’re bringing out.
Well, they’re meant to be bringing it out by the end of this year, possibly by the start of 2025. There could be two really good options in the market in right hand drive markets for electric ute within 12 months.