How we brought the first AVATR 12 to Romania — and what the press wrote

In February 2026, a white AVATR 12 GT was issued plates in Satu Mare. It was not a first for us as a process — we had brought cars from China before — but it was a first for that model in Romania, and one of very few in Europe. In March, EVmarket, ProMotor and Click wrote about it. None of them named us, and that is fine: the articles were about the car, not about us. This article is the part the press had no way of knowing: how it got here.

What the AVATR 12 is

AVATR is the luxury brand born of three companies that, separately, would already have been enough: Changan for the chassis and the manufacturing, CATL for the battery, Huawei for everything to do with onboard electronics and driver assistance. The AVATR 12 is their flagship saloon: over five metres long, designed by Nader Faghihzadeh, the man behind the BMW 6 and 7 Series, and with one solution you only notice the second time — it has no rear window. In its place, a camera and a screen in the rear-view mirror.

Our car: two motors, 578 hp, a 94.5 kWh CATL battery, 650–700 km of range in the Chinese CLTC cycle. Three Lidar sensors and the Huawei ADS driver assistance system. Nappa leather inside, ventilated and massaging seats, screens across the whole dashboard.

Why it is rare

Fewer than 40,000 were built between 2023 and 2025, all for the Chinese market. AVATR has no dealer network in Europe; the only cars on the continent were imported individually, like ours. A history report, a sea crossing, a customs clearance, an individual type approval at RAR — and only then, plates.

How it went, step by step

Finding it. A 2024 car with low mileage, in a specification we wanted: white, light interior, the full sensor package. Not the first car we found, but the fourth — on the first three, the history report showed something we did not like.

The report. Chaboshi, the Chinese equivalent of CarVertical: over 350 points, from service history to battery condition. The mileage in the report matched the odometer, and only then did we pay the deposit.

The journey. Export paperwork, inland transport to the port, five to seven weeks at sea, unloading at a European port, customs — 10% duty on the car plus shipping, then 21% VAT on everything — and a truck to Satu Mare.

Type approval. The hard part. A model no RAR inspector had seen before, with documents to be requested from China and headlights to be checked against European rules. How type approval works, in detail.

The plates. The registration certificate, the registration itself, the number plates. The day the car became a car.

Roughly what it cost

The press wrote "around 70,000 euros with all taxes", and that is the right order of magnitude for a 2024 car with low mileage. Of that sum, the customs duty is 10% of the value of the car plus shipping, and the 21% VAT applies on top of everything that came before. The rest is the car, the shipping, the type approval and the registration. How the price is made up, exactly.

What it taught us

• Type approval is the hard part, not the shipping. The ship takes five to seven weeks and sails itself. The RAR file for a model nobody in Romania has seen before takes patience and documents you have to request from China.
• The menus are in English. Not Romanian. We say so before the order, not at handover.
• The charging port is a one-off fix. The car arrived with a Chinese GB/T port; it left us with CCS2, so it charges at any station in Romania. About charging.
• People stop beside it. Not because it is expensive — there are more expensive cars in any car park — but because they do not recognise it. That is the argument we cannot put in a spec sheet.

The car is in the photographs on the home page, with its plate on it. The press articles are under "In the press". If you want an AVATR 12 of your own, tell us the specification — we already know the way.