One of China’s leading car makers has been forced to issue a recall of one its Australian models due to a safety issue.
Deepal, which is one of many Chinese car companies to come to Australia in recent years, has issued a nationwide product safety recall for its 2025 Deepal E07 Multitruck due to its failure to meet Australian vehicle child safety standards.
Deepal has pitched the car to Aussie consumers as a cross between and SUV and a ute.
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The car has been recalled for the issue to be rectified and sales of the model have been temporarily halted across the country until the issue is sorted.
“Due to a manufacturing defect, the rear middle seating position may not have been fitted with a child restraint anchor point as required by Australian Design Rule (ADR) 34/03 – Child Restraint Anchorages and Child Restraint Anchor Fittings,” the recall notice on the Department of Transport website reads,
“As a result, an infant or child car seat restraint cannot be securely installed.”
“In the event of an accident or hard braking, if the infant or child seat is not securely installed it could increase the risk of injury or death to vehicle occupants.”
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According to the Department of Infrastructure and Transport: “Owners of affected vehicles will be contacted by Deepal [which trades as Chongqing Changan Automobile Co., Ltd] requesting they immediately schedule an appointment with their preferred authorised Deepal dealer to have the work carried out, free of charge.”
For their part Deepal said they have “temporarily paused sales and deliveries of the MY25 E07 to complete required compliance work”.
The top middle-rear child seat anchor point is required by Australian law, however it is not a requirement in other countries, such as in Europe,
The differences in safety requirements has caught other car makers such as Tesla, who launched the Model 3 in Australia without the safety component before the problem was rectified.
Deepal claims the E07 multitruck is “more than just an SUV, more than just a ute …”
However our reviewer wasn’t so sure, claiming China’s ‘Temu Cybertruck’ makes no sense.
Deepal calls their Multitruck a segment-breaking first. It’s certainly unique in Australia – the review reads.
Still, it’s hard to ignore the elephant in the room – the E07 looks like a pretty unapologetic rip off of Tesla’s Cybertruck.
It’s not a crime to be inspired by another car maker’s design. But Deepal has made a Temu Cybertruck which somehow misses the point. It’s more than Tesla’s space management that makes the Cybertruck interesting. It also has an impressive 1134kg payload and 4990kg towing capacity.
If you ignore the multiple cases where Cybertrucks have crashed and caught fire, they are a compelling car.
While Deepal have excelled in clever external design, the E07 can’t compete with Australia’s popular dual cab utes at work.
Last month, the top-selling Ford Ranger ute was also hit with a recall notice, due to a software fault with the vehicles that can “under certain circumstances” cause the vehicle transmission to immediately switch into park while the car is travelling at low speeds.
