What do you get when you combine a former Holden proving ground, the makers of Ford’s fastest ever cars and Australian engineers? A Chinese plug-in hybrid ute.
JAC’s Australian launch has got off to a less-than-auspicious start, with its sole offering in the T9 ute being one of the slowest-selling dual-cabs on the market, amid increasing competition from its fellow Chinese rivals.
With its upcoming Hunter PHEV around the corner, JAC is stepping up development of the electrified ute to take a better swing at capturing Australian buyers, and it’s not doing it alone.
After previously announcing it was conducting local testing of the Hunter PHEV ute at Lang Lang – Holden’s long-standing proving ground, now owned by VinFast – JAC today said it had engaged Canadian engineering firm Multimatic to produce local ride and handling tunes for the model.
Multimatic is best known for being the company behind the production of Ford’s GT supercar and the Mustang GTD racing-based road car, as well as the Aston Martin Valkyrie.
The local efforts are being spearheaded by Australian engineer Michael Barber, who formerly worked for Holden as a vehicle dynamics development engineer across the Commodore VX-VE generations, before being promoted to a more senior role for the VF Commodore.
“The investment JAC is making, in both time and resources, demonstrates their commitment to developing a vehicle truly suited to Australia,” Barber said in a media release.
“JAC has sent us an impressive library of tuning components, which gives us the scope to explore different configurations and find the optimal setup.
“Australian roads are unique – we have challenging surfaces, long distances, and demanding conditions from urban to outback. I want customers to find Hunter easy to drive and confident across all those conditions, straight out of the box.”
JAC plans to launch the Hunter PHEV in Australia around mid-2026, at which point it’ll be the fourth plug-in hybrid ute on sale locally.
The BYD Shark 6, the GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV, and the Ford Ranger PHEV all launched within the past 18 months. The latter is engineered and designed in Australia, while GWM undertakes its own testing at Lang Lang where it has permanent residency.
Despite these Australian connections to the GWM and Ford, BYD’s Shark 6 is by far the most popular of the three PHEV utes, having only launched in 2025 but already recording enough sales to be the best-selling PHEV of all time locally.
Former Holden proving ground home helps another new Chinese ute
As previously reported, JAC’s Australian division hasn’t locked in specifications for the Hunter PHEV, however an ‘Australian Edition’ T9 PHEV was revealed at a Chinese motor show last year.
JAC has previously claimed the T9 PHEV will be powered by a turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol engine, which is mated to a pair of electric motors – a 130kW unit on the front axle, and 150kW at the back.
Quoting total outputs of 350kW and 1000Nm, the T9 PHEV will be significantly more potent than its rivals, while a 31.2kWh battery is claimed to provide 100km of electric-only driving range.
That’s more than double the Ranger PHEV’s 49km claim, and identical to the Shark 6, however the Cannon Alpha PHEV is still the on-paper king with a 115km figure.
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