Avatr Is Coming to Australia With the 07L, Not the 07

Image credit: AVATR. Overseas model shown.

There is another Chinese premium brand on the way, and this one arrives with a name most Australians have never had to learn. Avatr is a joint venture between Changan, CATL and Huawei, which is an unusual set of parents: the car company builds it, the battery company supplies the cells, and the phone company supplies the software and much of the driver assistance. Changan Group Australia has now confirmed it is coming here.

The confirmed details are short enough to list in a sentence. The first model is the 07L electric SUV, in right-hand drive. Pre-orders open before the end of 2026. First deliveries are targeted for the first half of 2027. Changan Group is bringing the brand in and has not yet decided whether to appoint a distributor or run the market itself, with dealer appointments expected before the end of this year.

Everything else is unconfirmed, and that includes the part most people want. There is no Australian price. There is no Australian specification. There is no Australian website. Changan has said powertrain outputs, battery capacity, range and charging performance will all be confirmed closer to launch, which is a polite way of saying none of it is settled.

The Spec Sheet Going Around Is the Wrong Car

This is the part worth slowing down for, because it is an easy mistake and we nearly made it ourselves. There is a detailed Avatr brochure circulating at the moment, full of specifics: a 0.259 drag coefficient, a 35.4-inch panoramic screen, a 16-speaker Meridian system, zero gravity front seats, a 90L frunk, a 500 to 1,325L boot, a 4,825mm body. It is genuine Avatr material and every number in it is real.

It is also the 07, and Australia is getting the 07L.

Avatr sells both at once and lists them as separate models on its own site, alongside the 06, 06T, 11 and 12. The L is not a trim level or a facelift. It is a longer car with a different battery, and the gap shows up in exactly the figures a buyer would use to judge it.

Those yuan figures are in the table for one reason only, which is to show that the two cars are priced apart from each other in their home market. They are not a guide to an Australian price and we have not converted them. A Chinese domestic price excludes shipping, local compliance, the engineering that makes a car right-hand drive, luxury car tax and the cost of running a dealer network here. Cars routinely land at a very different number, in both directions.

What Avatr Publishes About the 07L Itself

Taking the 07L on its own Chinese figures, it is a five-seat electric SUV on an 800-volt architecture with a CATL Shenxing battery, sold in three versions. The two rear-drive versions use a single 305kW motor and claim 5.9 seconds to 100km/h, with 725km on the CLTC cycle. The tri-motor all-wheel-drive version claims 3.7 seconds and 650km CLTC. Charging is quoted at roughly 20 minutes from 0 to 80 per cent.

One figure we are deliberately leaving out: the tri-motor's combined power output is reported inconsistently, at 712kW in some accounts and 766kW in others. We have not found a single Avatr document that settles it, so we are not printing either number rather than picking the one that reads better.

The cabin is where the Huawei part of the joint venture shows. It runs HarmonyOS with a 35.4-inch pillar-to-pillar display, a separate 15.6-inch centre touchscreen, camera mirrors instead of glass ones, and a Meridian audio system. The driver assistance is Huawei's ADS, with a lidar unit on top of the windscreen alongside radar and camera coverage. None of that is confirmed for Australian cars, and camera side mirrors in particular are a regulatory question here rather than a styling one.

Image credit: AVATR. Overseas model shown, in left-hand drive.

Where It Would Land Against What We Already Hold

Without an Australian price or an Australian specification, most comparisons are off the table. Size is not, because a body is a body in any market, so here is where the 07L's claimed dimensions would sit against our own rows.

At 4,910mm it would be a genuinely large car in this company. Our Zeekr 7X rows carry 4,787mm, the Tesla Model Y 4,792mm and the XPeng G6 4,753mm, so the 07L would be more than 100mm longer than all three. Of the 301 on-sale electric rows where we hold a length, 90 are 4,910mm or longer, so it would be large without being exceptional, and most of that group is utes, vans and seven-seaters rather than five-seat SUVs.

The 735L boot claim is the more striking one. Of the 284 on-sale electric rows where we hold a boot figure, only 30 reach 735L, and our Model Y rows at 854L are one of the few five-seaters above it. The Zeekr 7X sits at 539L and the G6 at 571L, so if that 735L survives into Australian specification it is a real advantage rather than a brochure line.

The range claim is the one to be most careful with, and it is the reason we have not put it in a comparison table. 725km CLTC is not 725km WLTP. CLTC is the Chinese cycle and it is materially more generous than the WLTP figure Australian buyers are shown, so setting it beside the G6's 570km WLTP or the 7X's 480km WLTP would flatter the Avatr for reasons that have nothing to do with the car. Until there is an Australian WLTP number, the honest comparison does not exist.

If you are cross-shopping in this segment now, our range calculator shows what speed and cold weather do to the WLTP figures of the cars we do hold, and the highway efficiency comparator ranks them at 110km/h. Neither can run the 07L, because Avatr has published no Australian figures to run it on.

The Safety Rating Does Not Travel

Avatr quotes a five-star C-NCAP result and a long list of structural claims: nine airbags as standard including rear side and front far-side bags, 90 per cent high-strength steel and aluminium in the body, a 1,968mm energy-absorbing sill and an IPX8-rated battery pack.

None of that is an ANCAP rating. C-NCAP is a different programme testing to a different standard, and a result in one does not convert into a result in the other. ANCAP has not tested the 07L, so as far as Australian buyers are concerned the safety rating is no data, and it will stay that way until ANCAP publishes one. We will not carry a star rating against this car before then, in a table or in a sentence.

What to Actually Watch For

Three things will tell you whether this launch is real on the timeline Changan has given.

A distribution decision. Changan has not settled whether it appoints a distributor or runs the market directly, and that choice shapes servicing, warranty and how quickly a network exists. Dealer appointments are promised before the end of 2026, which is the first checkable milestone.

An Australian specification. Right-hand drive is confirmed, but the equipment is not. Camera side mirrors, the lidar-based assistance suite and the full Huawei cabin all have to clear Australian rules, and the version that lands may be a different car to the Chinese one in more than the steering wheel position.

A price. Pre-orders are supposed to open before the end of 2026, and a pre-order without a price is not much of a pre-order. That is the point at which this car becomes comparable to anything else on this site, and the point at which it goes into our database with figures attached.

Until then the 07L is not in our database, and that is deliberate rather than an oversight. We add cars on Australian manufacturer figures, and Avatr has not published any yet. You can see what the segment looks like today across our electric listings, and we will add the 07L the day there is an Australian document to build it from.