With Dongfeng entering South Africa a couple of weeks ago and with four dealerships operational now, it is interesting to look at the Chinese brand and its joint venture with Nissan (Dongfeng Nissan Passenger Vehicle Company - DFN), launching the new Teana at the Guangzhou Motor Show in China for the Chinese market.
Share with friends
What is it?
The Teana is a large sedan equipped with Huawei's latest cockpit system, HarmonySpace5.0. This system will be adopted across all grades of the Teana sold in China.
Exterior:
The exterior features a sleek, elongated and refined look. Notable design elements include the “star ring” LED , which extends from the centre of the front grille to the headlights on both sides. The twin-projector LED headlights can illuminate up to 230 metres, the longest in its class, significantly enhancing night time driving safety.
Interior:
Inside, about 90% of the surface is covered with soft pads and ambient lighting with up to 256 colour settings has been installed. The vehicle also offers a large touchscreen display with touch operation and high-precision voice control throughout the cabin, providing comfort akin to a moving smart home.
The spacious interior allows for relaxed and comfortable seating in both front and rear seats. The seats feature spinal support, ventilation, memory functions and massage capabilities. A fully adjustable footrest is also included, enhancing comfort further.
As the world’s first internal combustion engine vehicle to feature HarmonySpace5.0 as standard, it offers an in-car system that functions like a smartphone. It includes a 15.6-inch Huawei intelligent display, the largest in its class, along with an AI voice assistant capable of high-precision voice recognition and over-the-air updates.
The vehicle comes standard with a 15-speaker sound system (17 speakers for the top-grade), developed jointly with HUAWEI SOUND.
Powertrain:
It is powered by Nissan’s 2.0-litre turbo engine, delivering 179kW and torque of 371Nm.
Toyota South Africa Motors (TSAM) returns as sponsor of the Absa Cape Epic for the fourth consecutive year, standing alongside Absa, which celebrates 20 years as title sponsor of the world’s toughest mountain bike stage race.
At the NADA Connect 2026 conference, the Deputy CEO of WeBuyCars, Dr Wynand Beukes, took the stage to share what he called “our story, not the right story or the wrong story, just ours”.
South African innovation leader and founding CEO of 1064 Degrees, Dean Furman, delivered a high energy wake up call to the automotive retail sector at the National Automobile Dealers’ Association’s (NADA) Connect 2026 conference, urging companies to stop treating artificial intelligence as futuristic and start treating it as fundamental.