Great Wall Motor Co., a leading domestic SUV maker, will boost the share of sedans in its product portfolio, says Wang Fengying, the company's president.

 

"The share occupied by sedans in our product portfolio will increase in the years to come," Wang told Automotive News China at the Shanghai auto show last week.

 

Initially Great Wall will focus on building compact sedans, or A-segment cars as they are also known in China, Wang said.

 

From 2010 onwards, Great Wall will move on to build sedans in larger sizes, she added.

 

At the Shanghai auto from April 20 through April 28, the company displayed 12 vehicles, including five sedans, four SUVs, a pickup, an MPV and a saloon car.

 

The five sedans included three now in production; a 1.3-liter hatchback Florid, a 1.5-liter hatchback GWperi and a 1.5-liter four-door sedan Coolbear.

 

Wang gave no timeframe for production of the other two sedans: a 3.0-liter mid-sized sedan code-named CHCO11 and a pure electric vehicle.

 

Powered by a lithium ion battery, Great Wall's electric car has a range of 160 kilometers on a full charge and a maximum speed of 130 kilometers per hour, according to information released by the company.

 

Among the four SUVs Great Wall put on display at the show, one – the Hover H7 – was a concept.

 

The other three SUVs were two redesigned versions of Great Wall's Hover SUV - the 2.4-liter Hover H5 and the 1.3-liter Hover M1 - and a newly developed 1.5-liter model called the Hover M3. All three will go on sale later this year.

 

Great wall has benefited from industry-boosting measures enacted late last year, including a cancellation of China's flat-rate road-maintenance vehicle tax and a halving of purchase tax on cars with engines sized 1.6 liters or below.

 

In the first quarter, passenger vehicle sales nationwide increased 7.8 percent from a year earlier, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

 

Great Wall's sales, meanwhile, surged 26 percent year-on-year to 40,000 vehicles over the same period, according to information released by the company. Of that figure, 13,000 units were sedans.

 

In 2008, Sales of Great Wall were about 125,000 units. Wang said her company's sales target for 2009 is 200,000 units.