Chery launching yet another brand, this time for its new ute

Chinese carmaker Chery has a menagerie of brands including Exeed, Jetour, Karry, Omoda and Jaecoo, and soon it’ll add another to its ranks.

Chery is reviving the Rely brand, which it’ll use for its new utes. That’s despite Chery already having the Karry brand name for light commercial vehicles, which it also previously used on dual-cab utes and currently uses on vans and their cab-chassis variants in China.

Car News China reports Rely will be Chery’s “global intelligent pickup ecosystem brand”, offering combustion, electric, extended-range electric and plug-in hybrid powertrains.

It will reportedly have four major product lines and “16 product portfolios”.

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One of these model lines may be the production version of the KP11 design prototype, which was revealed last year with Chery badging and petrol or plug-in hybrid power.

It’s shaping as Chery’s rival to the likes of the GWM Cannon, LDV T60 and JAC T9, and a belated successor to defunct Karry models like the Higgo.

Chery is accepting submissions from the public for Rely’s logo, and in a flyer advertising the competition it has included a rendering of a particularly squared-off, American-looking ute.

It’s unclear if this rendering previews a production vehicle.

Chery has previously flagged the Australian market as an important one for utes.

“We are also working on the feasibility study of developing the pickups because the pickup market in Australia is something very, very important,” Chery International executive vice president Charlie Zhang told media in July 2022, shortly before the carmaker returned to Australia.

“So I believe in the next years, we will develop the pickup.”

Chery has used the Rely brand name before.

In 2009, it introduced both the Rely and Riich brand names. Riich was intended to be a more premium counterpart to the budget-friendly Chery brand, while Rely sold SUVs, people movers and vans.

The Riich brand was discontinued in 2013 due to slow sales, and most Rely models also expired around the same time though one – the H-Series van, closely resembling the previous Toyota HiAce – continued until 2021.

As Car News China explains, the failure of Riich and Rely didn’t stop Chery from almost immediately launching another two new brands after Riich’s discontinuation, and then additional brands several years later.

Chery said at Rely’s launch in 2009 that the name stood for Reliable, Economic, Leading and Young. This time around, Rely is claimed to be an acronym for Rebuild, Explore, Link and Yield.

Rely’s utes will enter a growing domestic market for these vehicles. Sales have been rising as restrictions on where utes can be driven have been phased out by various jurisdictions within China.

Car News China reports Chinese brands sold 137,000 utes in the first quarter of 2025, up 6.8 per cent.

Looking at March specifically, a total of 58,000 utes were sold, up 13.1 per cent. GWM sold 20,421 utes, more than twice as many as second-placed JAC.

Chinese brands exported 62,000 utes in the first quarter of 2025, up 31 per cent; exports accounted for 45 per cent of total Chinese ute sales.

The 4×4 ute segment is Australia’s second largest, with a total of 203,176 vehicles delivered during 2024.

GWM was also the biggest player among the Chinese brands here, with its 7978 Cannon and 1095 Cannon Alpha deliveries giving it a 4.5 per cent share of the segment.

LDV delivered 6302 T60s in 2024, good for a 3.1 per cent segment share. These Chinese utes have subsequently been joined by the JAC T9 and BYD Shark 6, while Foton is relaunching this year with its new V7 and V9 utes.

The LDV T60 will be joined this year by the larger Terron 9 ute, which will be offered with electric power as the eTerron 9. It’ll also be offered by fellow SAIC Motor brand MG as the U9.