In August, wholesale deliveries in the Chinese passenger vehicle fell for the fourteenth month. SAIC’s Roewe division dipped by nine per cent yet remains the country’s seventeenth most popular brand, its wholesales numbering 266,767 vehicles over the first eight months, well ahead of eighteenth placed Chery. A big range of models and more coming soon are a lot of the reason why Roewe is doing relatively well.
Cars
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The Ei5 is a C segment sized electric wagon which is said to share its platform with the Roewe 360 and Buick Excelle GX. The first time this car was seen was as a prototype at the Guangzhou motor show in November 2017. Production commenced in May last year. The mid-cycle facelift should take place in the final quarter of 2021 and depending on how successful the car is, a replacement should be on sale in 2025.
A successor for the 950 is overdue and should be announced fairly soon. This large sedan is expected to have been previewed by the Vision R, a concept which premiered at November 2015’s Guangzhou motor show. This gold-painted design study was similar in stance to the BMW 6 Series Gran Coupé. The new model will probably be based upon the Buick LaCrosse.
SUVs
The RX5, which was the first SUV for the Roewe brand, was joined by the smaller RX3 in November 2017. Roewe’s second SUV was displayed for the first time later at the Chengdu motor show in August 2017. This 4.4m long model, which shares SAIC’s C architecture with the MG ZS, entered production two months later at SAIC’s Zhengzhou plant. The RX3 was the first vehicle for this factory, which has an annual capacity of 400,000 vehicles.
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By GlobalDataThere are two choices of power for the Marvel X, a 4.7m long electric SUV. The cheaper of the pair comprises a two-motor set-up which also means rear-wheel drive and a claimed range of up to 500km. The more expensive version has three-motors and standard all-wheel drive.
The Marvel X, which was launched in China in October 2018, will likely have several battery upgrades during what should be a seven-year life cycle, with a facelift probably in mid-2022.
A future SUV which is said to be around the same size as the Marvel X will likely be called RX7. Unlike the electric SUV, which is said to employ a new SAIC electric vehicles architecture, the RX7 should be based on the company’s existing SSA platform, and offer front- as well as all-wheel drive variants but no fully electric version.
The Vision E, a concept which premiered at the Shanghai motor show in April 2017, has been spoken of as a strong sign of what the RX7 will look like. The market release is expected to take place within months.
The 4.9m long RX8 was released for sale in China in March 2018. It is available with five or seven seats and uses the same body-on-frame platform as the Maxus/LDV T60 pick-up and D90 SUV. A slightly altered version was added to the Roewe range in April, the RX8 Max premiering at that month’s Shanghai motor show. Both are due for a restyle in the second half of 2021 with their replacements expected for early 2025.
Reports for many other manufacturers’ future models are grouped in the OEM product strategy summaries section of just-auto.com.
Future product program intelligence
More detail on past, current and forthcoming models can be found in PLDB, the future vehicles database which is part of QUBE. That includes those current and future Roewe models not discussed in the above report.
This was the second feature in a series examining the current and future models of SAIC’s passenger vehicle divisions. The first one one looked at Maxus (LDV in some countries), and the final report will focus on MG.
