Changan Beats BYD to Market in Colombia with Its EREV Pickup Truck, the Changan Hunter
Last Updated on: 8th April 2025, 06:55 pm
Much has been written about the BYD Shark, the stylish EREV pickup truck that will face one of the most established segments of the legacy auto industry in the developing world and Oceania … for now.
But BYD is not the only player aiming for a piece of this lucrative segment. Changan has also arrived with its own EREV pickup, the Changan Hunter, and it has actually beaten BYD to bring the first of such vehicles to the Colombian market.
The Changan Hunter
I don’t normally report on individual vehicles, but the Hunter is important in one metric I consider fundamental for EV adoption: price. At COP$160’000.000 (USD$36,400), the Changan Hunter beats all its legacy competition: it’s cheaper than the Toyota Hilux ($40,000), the Ford Ranger ($41,400), and the Nissan Frontier ($45,000).
The Hunter is 5.6 meters long, can carry up to 800 kg, and is powered by a 31 kWh battery (enough for 140 km of driving), two electric motors (70kW in the front, 90kW in the rear), and a 2L gasoline generator, promising 800 km with a full tank. There’s a smaller, more expensive “luxury” version for those who don’t want a work truck, but instead a more commute-oriented one.
(Cue a comment on how wasteful it is to buy huge vehicles to take you to work, but, hey, at least this one potentially won’t burn oil, and the battery is also as small as the one in a city-car.)
The Hunter arrived in late March, and that month 3 sales were recorded. Numbers are expected to go up in April. As a sidenote, the Hunter is also offered in other markets (like Mexico) as a full ICEV, it’s only in Colombia that this denomination is exclusive for the EREV version.
Opportunities in the Pickup Truck Market
There’s only one other segment that has so far reached price parity in the Colombian market: midsize sedans (thanks to the GAC Aion ES and the Dongfeng S50, both starting around $22,500), but this is a very small segment, selling only a few dozen units a month. Much more important is the compact sedan segment, which has zero EV representatives as of today.
Meanwhile, the pickup truck segment sells well over a thousand units a month, and over half of these sales are roughly on par with the Hunter’s specs. Changan has been a niche brand in Colombia for years, averaging fewer than 100 monthly sales, so this could be its chance to break out of that slumber and become a notable brand in the country.
However, it will take some time for them to gain the prestige only BYD has gotten so far, and for that, the Hunter will need to prove itself a capable work vehicle, a comfortable ride, and a reliable machine. Affordability plays a large role at the start (motivating those who would otherwise sit on the fence or go with more traditional brands), but it will only pay in the medium term, when (if) it becomes paired with confidence and trust.
Changan is a “traditional” automaker in China and it has even arrived in other Latin American countries (like Mexico) focusing on regular combustion vehicles. In Colombia, it has several ICEV options that have so far done very poorly, and all growth has come from its NEV portfolio — with the Deepal and Lumin brands, and now the Hunter. This serves as an illustration on how “traditional” ICEV producers in China are focusing on their strengths, leaving the combustion paradigm behind and entering developing markets with competitive EV options, achieving what they failed to do in the 2010s when their ICE vehicles clearly weren’t up to the task of competing with Legacy Auto.
Given the value the Hunter offers, I would expect it to get at least 10% of the pickup market in the country by late 2025 or early 2026 (which would nearly triple Changan sales). This is unless we see a string of bad reviews in the coming weeks that point to lousy quality. Let’s wait and see how far off the mark I end up being.
Final Thoughts
I learned something when writing this article: it seems most of our pickup trucks here in Colombia come from Argentina. The three most popular models (which I quoted at the beginning) are all Argentinian, the fourth one (the Chevrolet Colorado) is Brazilian.
This means that Changan (and BYD) are threatening the very heart of Legacy Auto in South America, the long-standing plants in the industrial corridors of the South Cone. So long as these are replaced by Chinese factories, I doubt Brazil and Argentina would care, but until they are, these two economies could also be affected by a transition that’s going on at full swing.
However, the fact that most of our pickup trucks come from the South means that these producers are somewhat protected against the antics of Donald Trump. Should these pickup trucks come from Mexico instead, we could be seeing significant price hikes due to tariffs, and this could massively help Changan promote its Hunter; instead, it seems it will have to compete in more “fair” conditions.
May this serve as a reminder on how badly this trade war could hurt USA’s companies, and how other regions (including China and the EU, but also Brazil and Argentina as we see here) may find opportunities in the cracks that open once North American made vehicles become less and less affordable.
Whether you have solar power or not, please complete our latest solar power survey.
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one on top stories of the week if daily is too frequent.
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
CleanTechnica's Comment Policy
