It’s not uncommon for owners of new vehicles with dual-clutch transmissions and throttle-by-wire to technology to feel a bit at odds with the way the car behaves. The feeling of a stilted, hesitant operation mirrors your experience to some degree. Over time, this sensation can be reduced. But it sounds as though your experience is a bit more dramatic than the norm.

In the first instance, give the dealer the opportunity to check the car out and make it right if there’s a problem. Modern vehicles like this can be scanned and the operation of their major functions graphed to show whether they’re within tolerance or not. There may be a software 'patch' in the works at Haval to address this.

If that doesn’t satisfy you, you can contact Haval Australia’s customer service department and lodge a complaint. Finally, if none of that does any good, you can contact the ACCC as a car sold brand-new that is not fit for purpose falls within the commission’s sphere of influence. You may find an independent test report of the vehicle’s behaviour would be a handy thing to have if you go down this route.

A $200 aftermarket throttle controller may, indeed, produce a vehicle you are happier to drive, but you should definitely check with Haval first to see if there are any warranty concerns in fitting such a device. Some advertisers of these devices claim there is no warranty issue, given that Haval would need to prove the throttle controller was the cause of any mechanical issues in the future. We’d still check with Haval before committing, however.

Any time you have a burning smell in a car, you have a potential fire. If something is hot enough that you can smell it, it’s possibly hot enough to burst into flames, especially if it contacts a fuel or oil leak somewhere on the car.

The fact that the smell occurs when going uphill suggests that it’s something in the driveline (engine or transmission) that’s getting hot because it’s working hard. It could also be a cable or hose that’s incorrectly routed too close to something that’s getting hot (like the exhaust) and causing the smell. In any case, the answer to your question is no, it’s not normal and it needs investigating.

Sometimes, a new exhaust system will create the odd strange smell as it heats up the first couple of times this shouldn’t be happening after 9000km. You need to take the car back to where you bought it from and have the dealership fix this before a real fire takes hold, or something important melts and stops working.

The Haval product has only been on sale in Australia since 2015, so it’s a bit hard to gauge its long-term reliability prospects. Even more so when it’s a model like the Jolion which hasn’t been on local roads for anything like seven years (it was launched here in 2021).

Based on the experiences of CarsGuide readers, the Jolion has been responsible for some electronic woes and the odd build-quality issue. These, however, could be isolated problems rather than a general assessment of the model. At least with a 2024 model, you’ll have at least six years of warranty, so you could use that time to assess the car’s reliability and quality for yourself before making a decision to hold on to it beyond the warranty period.