Forthing Taikon 5 Lands in Australia This June: 170km EV Range From a Range-Extender, Combined Range Cut to 937km Pre-Launch

Image credit: Forthing Australia

Another Chinese badge is about to plug itself into the Aussie family SUV bracket. Forthing, owned by Dongfeng, is dropping into local showrooms in June 2026 with a single mid-size SUV called the Taikon 5. You can have it as a pure electric car or as a range-extender plug-in hybrid, where the petrol motor only ever runs as a generator and the wheels always feel electric. The headline number for cross-shoppers is the REEV's 170km of EV-only WLTP range, which is well above what an Outlander PHEV, a Sealion 6 or a Cupra Leon Ve will give you. The catch, dropped four days before this story went live, is that the much-louder "over 1,000km combined" claim has just been quietly walked back to 937km.

The brand: who actually sells you a Forthing

Forthing sits inside the Dongfeng Motor Group, the same parent that owns parts of the Nissan and Honda China joint ventures. In China the same SUV is sold as the Friday. The brand itself is new to Australia. The Australian distributor is Ateco Group, the same company that handles Ram, Renault, LDV and Maserati locally, so the dealer footprint will piggyback on networks that already exist rather than starting from scratch. Day to day, the Australian operation is being run by Shaun Garrard, who came across from Tesla and most recently looked after emerging brands at Ateco.

Why does that matter for a buyer? A brand-new badge always sits awkwardly on the residual-value question and the where-do-I-get-it-serviced question. Ateco has been doing Chinese and value-brand launches in Australia for a while, so the service side is the part most likely to look familiar on day one. Resale is the part that is going to take a couple of years of sales data to settle.

Two powertrains, one body

The Taikon 5 lands in Australia in two flavours. The simpler one is the pure battery-electric car (BEV). It pairs a single 150kW front motor with a 64.4kWh lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery and is rated at 400km on the WLTP test cycle. That puts it within a few kilometres of a Geely EX5 Standard Range, but on the same body that also gets a plug-in option.

The more interesting one is the range-extender (REEV). It carries a smaller 31.94kWh LFP pack and a 120kW electric drive motor, plus a 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine that exists only to top up the battery. The wheels never feel petrol torque. That setup is closer to what Leapmotor is doing with the C10 and B10 than to a regular Mitsubishi-style PHEV. The trade-off is that you carry the weight of both systems, but you also never get the awkward gearbox hand-off when the battery runs low.

The range correction

Forthing went out hard in April with a 1,050km combined-range claim on the REEV. On 12 June 2026 the company corrected that number. The combined REEV figure is now 937km WLTP, and Forthing has dropped its earlier "one of the longest-range plug-in hybrids in Australia" line. The 170km electric-only number is unchanged.

Worth keeping in perspective. Even at 937km, the combined REEV figure is still a tidy number for an SUV of this size, and the EV-only 170km is the part that most owners will use on a daily basis. The correction is more about the marketing claim than the underlying engineering.

Pricing and trims

Australian dollar pricing will be confirmed at the local launch this month. Forthing has confirmed two trims, Luxury and Exclusive, and both will be available in BEV and REEV. Until the local sticker drops, the best anchor point is New Zealand, where the same line-up is already on sale.

NZ pricing is included as a reference, not a forecast. Australian on-road costs, stamp duty and luxury car tax sit on top of any local list price, and Aussie distributor margins are not always a like-for-like with NZ.

Specs and dimensions

At roughly 4.6m long, the Taikon 5 lines up directly with a RAV4 or an X-Trail on the tape measure. That is squarely in "family-sized" territory rather than the small SUV class where the BYD Atto 2 or GAC Aion UT live.

Inside the cabin

Image credit: Forthing Australia

The interior follows the script most Chinese mid-size SUVs are now writing. A big central touchscreen running the climate, audio and infotainment, a driver display behind the wheel, soft-touch trim across the dash, and a chunky steering wheel with physical buttons rather than capacitive pads. Full feature lists by trim will be confirmed at the local launch, but the Luxury and Exclusive split is expected to split equipment along the usual lines: bigger wheels, panoramic glass roof, powered tailgate and upgraded audio reserved for Exclusive.

Cargo and passenger figures had not been signed off in metric Australian form at the time of writing. Once those land we will fold them into the comparison view.

Safety

ANCAP has not yet rated the Taikon 5. As a brand-new entrant, no local protocol score exists, and the European Euro NCAP also has not crash-tested this body. For buyers who treat an ANCAP star score as a hard purchase gate, the right move is to wait. Active safety equipment is expected to follow what Forthing is fitting in the export model: autonomous emergency braking, lane-keep assist, blind-spot monitoring, adaptive cruise and a 360-degree camera. We will confirm the local fitment list at launch and update this article when ANCAP publishes any score.

How it stacks up against other long-EV-range plug-ins

The Taikon 5 REEV is interesting because it is one of the few plug-ins that gives you triple-figure WLTP electric range in this body size, in this price ballpark. Here is how that 170km looks against the more familiar plug-in mid-size SUVs already on sale or just arriving in Australia:

For a metro commuter with off-street charging, the Taikon 5 REEV would realistically not need the petrol engine to fire up for a full working week. A 30km daily commute multiplied by five working days is 150km. The 170km battery handles that with a margin. The petrol engine then only really wakes up for weekend road trips or long weekly errands, which keeps service intervals and tyre wear closer to an EV than to a hybrid.

Where it sits in the CarSorted directory

We have not added the Taikon 5 to the CarSorted directory yet because Australian pricing and final variant specs are still being confirmed by Forthing Australia. As soon as the local launch event hands over the AUD figures, the Taikon 5 BEV and REEV will go live on /directory alongside the other mid-size electrified SUVs you can shop on CarSorted right now. In the meantime, the closest like-for-like cross-shop in our database sits on the plug-in mid-size SUV filter: the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV at $58,990 before on-roads, the BYD Sealion 6 Touring at $48,990 driveaway and the Cupra Leon Ve PHEV at $62,990 before on-roads. If we plug the Taikon 5 REEV into that group at a hypothetical $45,000 driveaway (using NZ pricing as a rough anchor), it would slot in as the cheapest of the lot while carrying the biggest battery and the longest EV-only range. That is the CarSorted-data lens we will use to update the listing on launch day.

Want to line it up against the cars already in the database? Use /compare for a side-by-side once we add the row, or read our Chinese brands coming to Australia 2026 rundown for the broader Forthing context.

Warranty and ownership

Forthing Australia has not published its final warranty terms ahead of launch. Ateco-distributed brands generally arrive with a 7-year vehicle warranty in Australia (Renault sits at 5, LDV at 7), and Chinese-built EVs from competing brands routinely come with a 7- or 8-year battery warranty. We will replace this paragraph with the locked-in number on launch day rather than guess.

What this means for buyers

If you already have your eye on an Outlander PHEV at $58,990 or a Cupra Leon Ve at $62,990, the Taikon 5 REEV is the one to put on your test-drive shortlist this winter. The EV-only 170km is roughly double what the Outlander gives you and 47km more than the Cupra, and on the NZ benchmark this car looks like it should land below both on price. For most metro buyers that gap means you can plug in at home each night and treat it like an EV during the week, then drive past the petrol queue on the long weekend run knowing you have 937km in the tank if you need it.

If you only ever do one thing and that thing is highway towing or remote off-roading, the diesel utes and dual-fuel ladder-frame SUVs are still the better tool. The Taikon 5 is front-wheel drive only on launch and no tow rating has been published. For families looking at a school-run-plus-soccer-plus-road-trip cycle, though, this is one of the most cohesive plug-in SUV briefs we have seen this year, and the corrected 937km combined number does not change that.

The two unknowns to wait on: the Australian launch price and the ANCAP rating. If you are happy to lock in a deposit before those land, the dealer network through Ateco is the lowest-friction way to register interest. If those are dealbreakers, sit on your hands for another month and pull the trigger after the local launch event. We will update the listing the moment AUD prices hit.

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