GWM to set up battery assembly and R&D in Thailand – CKD Ora Good Cat by 2024



Great Wall Motor (GWM) has chosen Thailand as the location to set up its new battery pack assembly plant. Costing an estimated total of $30 million (approx. RM137.7 million), the new plant will also be responsible for a compact car the company will be producing next year, reported Reuters.

Besides the battery pack assembly plant, GWM is also planning to establish a research and development centre in the country, where it might consider developing fully electric pickup trucks, according to Great Wall Motor Thailand managing director, Narong Sritalayon. When fully established, this development hub joins the other 10 similar R&D centres the Chinese carmaker owns globally.

Narong also mentioned that the company’s goal in making this investment in Thailand is to become the region’s main electric vehicle (EV) producer. However, this would depend partially on the subsidies given by the country’s government. The Thai government plans to convert around 30% of the country’s annual vehicle production, which is about 2.5 million vehicles into EVs by 2030.

The Heibei-based company launched its Ora Good Cat EV in Thailand in late 2021, which quickly became the top-selling EV in the country last year. The feline-like car is priced from THB828,500 (approx. RM110,013) onwards according to GWM Thailand’s official site, thanks to the local government’s THB230,500 (approx. RM30,607) subsidy, which helped keep the EV’s price tag low.

The Ora Good Cat in Thailand is currently a fully-imported unit (CBU). But this will change soon as the EV will be produced locally in Thailand starting next year. In order to meet the government’s incentive scheme requirements for carmakers, GWM will also be attempting to locally source more components such as battery packs, according to Narong.

Setting up a battery pack assembly would require an investment of THB500 million (approx. RM66,312,230) to THB1 billion (RM132,645,537). This will highly depend on the actual size of the facility, which is said to be finalised by the end of this year.

In his own word, the GWM Managing Director said, “We may become a contract manufacturer of batteries to other (automakers) as well. That would also scale up the capacity of the battery plant.”

This is the GWM Cannon pickup truck. GWM is also considering making EV trucks in the future.

Chinese carmakers – GWM and BYD have been majorly investing in Thailand, the world’s tenth-largest auto manufacturing economy. However, the majority of the country’s domestic market is still dominated by Japanese rivals such as Toyota and Isuzu, with pickup trucks contributing to over 50% of sales last year. On the dominance of the Japanese trucks in Thailand, Narong Sritayalon said, “I think there is a lot of things we can learn from Thailand’s unique market for pickup trucks.”