Freelander Brand Needs 25,000 Monthly Sales to Reach Its 300,000 Target
cheryjaguarlandrover.com
The Chery–Jaguar Land Rover joint brand Freelander wants 300,000 annual sales within three to five years, with exports making up half the volume.
The revived FREELANDER brand will need to sell more than 25,000 vehicles a month on average to hit its stated goal. The joint venture between Chery and Jaguar Land Rover aims to reach a sustainable 300,000 units a year within three to five years, with exports expected to account for roughly half of sales.
The first test will be the large crossover FREELANDER 8. Its first production unit rolled off the line on July 30, and pre-orders in China will open on August 10. Pricing and the full market launch date haven't been announced yet. Freelander's global CEO Wen Fei considers more than 10,000 monthly deliveries a strong result for a debut model. At the same time, the company would also count a steady 5,000 to 8,000 vehicles with good quality and positive customer feedback as an early success.
Even the upper end of that range covers only a third of the monthly volume the whole brand needs to hit its medium-term goal. The rest is supposed to come from new models. Over the next five years, FREELANDER plans to launch six vehicles with plug-in hybrid, series hybrid, and fully electric powertrains. Each model is set to get Chinese and international left-hand-drive versions, a separate EU variant, and a right-hand-drive version.
The lineup will be built on a new platform capable of supporting wheelbases from 2,850 to 3,250 mm. It's designed for crossovers across several size classes and all three types of electrified powertrains. That means FREELANDER 8 isn't meant to deliver the 300,000 figure on its own, but to kick off a lineup that will need a new model roughly every ten months on average.
The company wants to split future sales evenly between China and overseas markets — about 150,000 vehicles a year each. That makes exports not an extra channel but a mandatory half of the business plan. Since the brand doesn't have a single full year of sales data yet, the nearest real benchmark won't be the 300,000 figure, but steady deliveries of the first FREELANDER 8 once sales begin.
Earlier, 32CARS.RU reported that the first production Freelander 8 rolled off the line in China.
