China's Zotye announces first 19 U.S. dealers

Zotye will launch its U.S. offensive with a crossover.

Chinese automaker Zotye has started building a dealer network in the United States. It aims to start selling its cars in America before the end of 2020.

As of January 2019, the company has 19 stores ready to sell its cars. Industry trade journal Automotive News reported the future dealerships are scattered across the country; some are in the San Diego area, some are on the east coast, while others are in more rural parts of the country like Wichita, Kansas, and Oklahoma City. All of them will be opened by companies who already operate at least one car dealership.

That's just the beginning. Automotive News added  Zotye hopes to start distributing cars through anywhere between 300 and 325 dealers located in the top 80 markets across the United States. The company hasn't revealed which model(s) it will sell here yet, but rumors claim the first Zotye-built car to disembark in America will be the T600 (pictured), a crossover that made its debut on the Chinese market 2013. It could get a new name and design tweaks before arriving in U.S. showrooms.

"The company's first U.S. product will be an SUV with engineering, development, and homologation work currently underway," HAAH Automotive Holdings, Zotye's unfortunately-named parent company, wrote on its website.

Duke Hale, the CEO of Zotye's American division, promised to price the company's cars 20 percent under the competition. He also announced customers will be able to buy cars online, and that dealership will follow a strict, Saturn-like no-haggle policy.

"We've got the team; we've got the lineup; we've got the price; we've got the value. And we're going to have the experience. It's going to be hard to duplicate. A lot of competitors are going to nearly hate us," Hale told Automotive News.

Zotye may be the first Chinese company to sell cars in the United States under its own name, but it won't have a monopoly on the bottom end of the market for long. GAC, another China-based firm, has exhibited its cars at the Detroit auto show for years, and it even purchased advertising space at the Detroit airport to announce its American offensive. It also plans to gain a foothold in the United States in 2020.