Chery Jaguar Land Rover likely to launch new JV brand to take on Lynk & Co

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Chery Jaguar Land Rover will reportedly launch a new Chinese market-tailored JV brand, positioned between Jaguar Land Rover and Chery. The new brand is likely to take on Lynk & Co in the future.

Industry insiders analyzed that on one hand, the new brand may be aimed to help boost the sales of Jaguar Land Rover in China, and on the other hand, Chery can secure rich R&D experience from the JV and challenge the high-end vehicle market again with the new brand.

However, some industry insiders believed that the new brand needs large investments, and it's very tough to obtain market shares. Zhong Shi, an industry analyst, thought that Chery Jaguar Land Rover may be confronted with a number of difficulties if the new brand is established. For instance, foreign automakers have little experience in building new brands in China. What's more, customer can hardly accept a new JV model without the marque of Jaguar Land Rover.

As is known, Jaguar Land Rover and Chery established a joint venture in 2012 and started manufacturing the former's models in China since then. Currently, Jaguar Land Rover has released four locally-produced models in China, namely the Discovery, Evoque, Jaguar XFL and XEL. This year, the locally-produced Jaguar E-PACE will also hit the market.

According to the revealed sales data, Jaguar Land Rover delivered 146,300 vehicles in China with a year-on-year growth of 23% in 2017, outnumbering the brand's whole-year sales in Europe and enabling China to be the automaker's largest single market worldwide. Jaguar Land Rover suffered slow global sales growth in recent years. In the fiscal 2017, sales growth of Jaguar Land Rover was only 1.7%, while the growth rate reached 15.8% in the fiscal 2016.