Local execs explain Lepas positioning

AUSTRALIAN executives have clarified the positioning of the Chery Group’s latest sub brand for the local market within its wider portfolio, with the new entrant leaning on style to stand out from its rivals.

Speaking with Australian media at a recent Lepas media preview in Sydney, Chery Australia’s chief operating officer Lucas Harris outlined its “vibrant expressionist” buyer type and how Lepas differs from Chery, Omoda, and Jaecoo.

“Some of you will be thinking this is just another Chery brand. It isn't. Chery is a trusted, safe family, value (brand). Omoda is design and technology. Jaecoo premium for adventure. They each have a job to do, and they do it well,” he said.

“Lepas does a different job. It's for the person who has chosen everything else in their life carefully, and then had to settle on a car. We're not here to take sales off our own brands. We're here because there's a customer nobody in the category is talking to. We call them vibrant expressionists.”

“What this means in plain terms is this: they live in cities, 25 to 59, slightly more women than men. About a third of them have young kids. One in five are young and single. Music, going out, sport, travel, and culture are all high index for this customer group. They put thought into where they eat, what they wear, where they travel. Then they walk into a showroom and get handed something beige. That's the gap, and that's who the brand is for.”

The design of Lepas’s vehicles – which has been heavily inspired by leopards – is a key point of difference for the brand according to the Chery Group’s global vice president of design Steve Eum.

“Design is the first direct connection you have with any customer or consumer. That's the emotional factor that you're going to get, the first thing you see in front of you is going to have some sort of emotional connection, so for Lepas we definitely want that the strongest connection possible with design,” he said while speaking with GoAuto.

While not pitched as Chery’s “premium” brand, Mr Eum said the Lepas brand represents an additional level of sophistication over Omoda and Jaecoo as well as the mass-market Chery brand.

“I think we're trying to target a certain customer base, whereas we have Chery, we have Omoda-Jaecoo here, which is completely different. Chery's more about the overall mass market. Omoda-Jaecoo is a lot more youthful, sporty.”

“(Lepas) is, I hate to use the word ‘premium’....(a) higher tier (of) sophistication in terms of where we want to reach the customer base.”

“(It’s) not just the colour choices, but also the materials, the layout, the quiet luxuriousness that happens on the interior and on the exterior, and the overall form factor as well as (small) details will make the difference,” he said.

Earlier this year, Omoda-Jaecoo’s chief commercial officer Roy Muñoz explained to GoAuto that the two sub brands are pitched as “masstige” offerings, combining premium elements at a relatively affordable price point.

However, according to Mr Harris, Lepas has not been pitched as another “masstige” brand.

“Look, I think the difference with Lepas is that the design is more elegant and you might not be able to see it in the (products that have been unveiled), but some of the upcoming product it turns into a more sort of sports luxury feeling is the design, and where you'll see the product hit over the next little while, and maybe we'll first see that with the L2 or the L8. You'll start to see a bit of that.”

“We're not trying to make a car for everybody, and we're not trying to make a car to attract every single consumer. It's about having something that is a bit more design-led, a bit more refined in its shapes and its design language, and then having obviously a new-energy focus where it's going to predominantly be BEV and a mixture of PHEV.

“There's no other cars in the market or brands in the market, to my mind, that look the same and feel the same, and so we want to try and access that white space where we don't think there are any other brands talking to the customers that are going to want to look at Lepas and bright colours is one part of that. I mean, it's easy to find shades of grey in pretty much every model, and we will have more subdued colours available for Lepas. But it's not just about having bright colours, it's also having that sort of elegant and eventually sports luxury design package.”

While serving a different role to its Chery Group stablemates, Lepas isn’t intended to sit above Omoda and Jaecoo but rather alongside them according to Mr Harris.

“So our brand portfolio is not about stacking brands on top of each other vertically, and I appreciate that sometimes that's difficult for people to wrap their heads around. But it's not about trying to make one more premium or more luxurious than the other.”

“It's about having a horizontal plane in which all the brands sit on, and trying to find different subsets of customers where that brand and that design language speaks to a different kind of customer.

“Now we don't think that customers only fit into five different categories. There's of course going to be some overlap, and maybe they're 80 per cent in this category and 20 per cent in this category, and that's totally fine. It's the 80 per cent that products A, B, and C don't talk to, but we've got now product D, which we want to talk to those customers. It's not a vertical stack.”

The first Lepas product to hit Australian showrooms is the mid-size battery electric L6 SUV, which enters a size and powertrain segment subset that has become increasingly competitive in recent years.

Tesla’s Model Y leads sales charts in the medium BEV SUV segment, followed by the BYD Sealion 7.

The Lepas L6 BEV plays in the smaller end of the medium segment, sharing the market with the likes of the Geely EX5, BYD Atto 3 EVO, and the Forthing Electric.

While not naming specific rivals, Mr Harris recognised BYD and Geely as marques that consumers might compare Lepas to, but believes the brand’s product is ultimately different.

“To be honest with you, I don't think there are that many medium-sized BEV SUVs. There's really not that many options, frankly. I think customers are naturally going to compare us to BYD and to Geely because they obviously have midsize SUVs which are battery electric.”

“Personally, I don't see them as a direct comparison. I think our product's quite different, but I can understand why a consumer would compare across the two.”

Lepas is the fourth brand the Chery Group has launched in Australia since returning Down Under in 2023 after Chery itself and Omoda and Jaecoo as standalone brands. It will also be joined by iCaur in early-2027.

The L6 BEV officially launches in October, with the Everything Electric show in Sydney marking its public debut.