Chery
Chery Automobile Co. Ltd., trading as Chery, is a Chinese automobile manufacturer. Founded in 1997, it is currently the fourth largest automobile manufacturer group in China, with 2,603,916 vehicles sold in 2024. The company is headquartered in Wuhu, Anhui.
Chery was founded in 1997 by government officials of Wuhu, who appointed Yin Tongyue, the current chairman, as the company's first technical director. Chery launched its first car called the Fengyun in 1999, a copy the SEAT Toledo Mk1 using an engine production line from Ford Dagenham. During its early years, Chery used technologies from other manufacturers; some were licensed and others were acquired by reverse engineering. This led to a lawsuit in 2003 filed by General Motors alleging that Chery had copied the design of one of its cars. Chery has since developed and improved its technologies. Since 2006, Chery has produced its engines branded as ACTECO, which it also sells to other manufacturers.
Until 2025, the company used to be a subsidiary of Chery Holding Group Co., Ltd and under the ownership of the Wuhu municipal government. After its IPO in 2025, it was spun-off from the Chery Holding and currently co-owned by the government of Anhui and Wuhu, the employees and several private companies. Since Chery Automobile went IPO, Chery has begun to market itself as "Chery Group", incorporating the Chery Holding's commercial vehicles business. In reality, however, "Chery Group" is not an actual legal entity but merely a marketing concept.
The company started exporting cars from China in 2001, ahead of other Chinese manufacturers and has been the top exporter of Chinese brand passenger vehicles since 2003. The company exported 269,154 vehicles in 2021, 451,337 vehicles in 2022, and 937,148 vehicles in 2023, accounting for 52 percent of its overall sales.
Chery invests more heavily in overseas markets than other Chinese manufacturers, and many of its vehicles are assembled outside China using complete or semi-complete knock-down kits. In 2024, Chery Holding Group made its debut on the Fortune Global 500 list, securing the 385th position with a revenue of $39.0917 billion.
Chery adopts a multi-brand strategy by establishing many car brands for different purposes., the company has nine active brands, including the main Chery brand, Exeed for premium vehicles, Luxeed as a collaborative electric car brand with Huawei, Jetour that focuses on SUVs, iCar/iCaur for electric SUVs, Karry for commercial vehicles, and Omoda, Jaecoo, Lepas, Exlantix, and Aiqar for export markets.
The company also operates a joint venture with JLR since 2012 called Chery Jaguar Land Rover to produce Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles in China.
On 25 September 2025, Chery raised about US$1.2 billion in its Hong Kong IPO at HK$30.75 per share, valuing the company at nearly US$23 billion, marking it as one of Hong Kong's largest IPOs of the year.
History
Early years
Chery was founded on 8 January 1997 as a state-owned enterprise by a group of officials from Wuhu city in Anhui province. The city officials appointed Yin Tongyue, the current Chery chairman, as the company's technical director in 1996. Yin is from Anhui, and at that time was a manager in FAW, holding a position as a workshop director for the FAW-Volkswagen joint venture. The car project was formally incorporated on 18 March 1997 as Anhui Auto Parts Co., Ltd., with substantial funding from the Anhui provincial government, amounting to millions of yuan. The plan was to set up an engine production line and creating a components industry, before initiating car manufacturing operations.Chery began automobile production in 1999 using a unlicensed copy SEAT Toledo chassis and the Ford CVH engine manufactured using equipment bought from Ford Dagenham. Called the Fengyun, Chery's first car sold nearly 30,000 units. By 2002, Chery's production and sales exceeded 50,000 units, ranking among the "top eight" in the domestic passenger car industry. However, the company was only awarded a national passenger car production license in 2003, so while its first product rolled off the line in December 1999, it could not be legally sold outside the Anhui province for several years. During that period, Chery solved the problem by piggybacking on a SAIC Motor license until 2003. In this period, SAIC held a 20 percent share in Chery. Ownership was soon sold due to rising tensions between Chery and SAIC partner General Motors, and political pressure from the SAIC management towards Anhui authorities.
Expansion period
In May 2003, Chery launched its smallest car, the QQ, which became popular due to its design and affordability. Despite its successful sales, it also received quality and durability complaints from owners. In June 2003, American manufacturer General Motors filed a widely publicized lawsuit against Chery, alleging that the design of the QQ copied the first-generation Daewoo Matiz, a vehicle developed by GM Daewoo. In late 2005, the lawsuit was settled out of court.GM was not the only manufacturer to have been exasperated with Chery; Volkswagen planned to file a lawsuit against Chery regarding the secret side deals it engaged with VW parts suppliers to produce the Chery Fengyun that was based on the Volkswagen Jetta II. Volkswagen agreed to abstain from a planned lawsuit after Chery offered financial settlement out of court. This entrepreneurial risk-taking led The Wall Street Journal in 2007 to describe Chery's corporate culture as "an odd hybrid of Communist state enterprise and entrepreneurial start-up".
In December 2004, Chery entered an importation agreement with American company Visionary Vehicles, laying the groundwork to introduce five Chery models to US and Canada. Visionary Vehicles was owned by Malcolm Bricklin, widely known as the entrepreneur who brought Yugo cars to the US. Both companies hoped to sell 150,000 vehicles in the US by 2007. Investments were made to ensure compliance with safety regulations, and a dealership network was established across North America. Allegations of breach of contract by Chery and the legal disputes that followed in 2006 disrupted the collaboration between both companies, and Visionary Vehicles ended up winning a lawsuit it brought against Chery in 2013 to recoup losses from the failed deal.
Chery started improving its engineering capabilities, and launching other new products such as the Tiggo SUV and other models. In 2003, Chery started buying 1.4-litre Tritec petrol engines produced in Brazil and jointly developed by BMW and Chrysler. In 2005, the company used a Mitsubishi Motors engine for the Tiggo, which was widely used in the Chinese car industry at that time. Chery started producing its own engine branded as ACTECO since 2006. It is the result of a technical cooperation dating from 2003 with AVL, an Austrian engineering company. Starting 2008, Chery supplied ACTECO engines to Fiat, which used the 1.6- and 1.8-liter engines for the Fiat Linea.
The A3, introduced in August 2007, became a turning point of the brand. The sedan was styled by Pininfarina, and became the first Chinese-developed car to receive a 5-star rating in the China NCAP safety test.
In 2009, Chery produced 508,500 units, and at that time, it had an annual production capacity around 650,000 units. More than 400,000 of its 2009 sales were sedans. In that year, Yin Tongyue announced changes to the company's strategy to become a multi-brand carmaker by introducing three new brands: Karry, Rely, and Riich. Chery also renamed all its cars to Cowin followed by a number, except for the E5, QQ, and Tiggo. It also introduced the Fengyun 2 to replace the SEAT-based sedan. These changes are aimed to eliminate the low-budget image of Chery cars. Later its sprawling production policy and lineup became a problem for Chery. With over 100 new models in the works, Chery decided to cancel the Rely and Riich brands in the fall of 2012. Since then, Chery has entered an adjustment period of "returning to one Chery", and reduced its planned models to around 30.
Chery Holding establishment
In 2010, Chery entered a new phase with the establishment of Chery Holding Co., Ltd., which became a conglomerate holding company that also operated other businesses such as financial services, real estate, and service sector. By 2024, the holding company consists of over 300 member companies.Chery became the seventh-most productive Chinese vehicle manufacturer in 2010 by selling nearly 700,000 units. Slipping sales marked 2011 and 2012; in these years, the company produced more than 640,000 and near 590,000 units, respectively, and it moved from a seventh to a tenth-place ranking. The company in 2011 exported around 25% of its total production. In 2011, Chery built its first fully owned manufacturing plant outside of China, located in Jacareí, Brazil. It went operational in 2014.
Since the late 2000s period, Chery also began to actively seek a partnership with foreign carmakers. Several possible tie-ups with both Chrysler and Fiat were explored, but fell through. In mid-2011, the company signed an agreement with Fuji Heavy Industries to establish a manufacturing joint venture in China, with a production site planned in Dalian, Liaoning. The planned joint venture failed to receive an approval from the Chinese government despite multiple attempts. Chery started partnering with Jaguar Land Rover in March 2012, which was looking to produce cars in China through a mandatory 50-50 joint venturer with a local company. The joint venture was formalised as Chery Jaguar Land Rover in November 2012. Its first product, a Range Rover Evoque, rolled off the production line in October 2014 from the newly built plant in Changshu, Jiangsu. Chery also began manufacturing a revived version of the Moke under an agreement with JLR since 2013. Its design evokes the classic Mini Moke built from 1964 until 1993.
Chery was also involved with the establishment of Qoros, a joint venture formed in 2007 with Kenon Holdings based in Singapore and owned by Israeli investors, and started selling the Qoros 3 sedan in 2013. Qoros was sold off in 2018, and faced bankruptcy in 2022.
In 2014, Chery revived its multi-brand strategy by establishing Cowin as a separate brand, which is positioned as a low-budget offering. The brand was partially sold in 2018. Another brand that was established by Chery is Exeed, which is positioned in the premium segment. The brand was introduced in September 2017 at the International Motor Show Germany in Frankfurt by showcasing the TX concept vehicle. The first production model from Exeed was the Exeed TX/TXL mid-size SUV in March 2019. In January 2018, Chery introduced another brand called Jetour at an event in Beijing, which focuses on "value for money" mid-size SUVs and targets Chinese families living in tier-three and tier-four cities who travel often.
Chery started early in producing electric vehicles by introducing its first EV in 2009, which is an electrified version of the original Chery QQ. The company established an EV division called [|Chery New Energy] in 2010. Following this, Chery released the Chery eQ in 2014, an EV variant of the second-generation QQ, and later launched the eQ1 in 2016. The eQ1 went on sale in 2017, and became one of the most popular electric car in China until 2020, when rivals such as the Wuling Hongguang Mini EV became available. In June 2021, Chery produced its 200,000th eQ1.