China’s Chery seeks to be ‘Toyota plus Tesla’ as it targets global expansion

[WUHU, China] Chery, China’s largest car exporter, is taking inspiration from two very different automakers – Toyota and Tesla – as it pursues expansion in Europe and beyond, its top executive told Reuters.

Chery is considering adding production capacity in Barcelona, Spain, where it has a joint venture. It is also looking for more opportunities to share production facilities with European car companies, chairman Yin Tongyue said on Monday (Apr 27).

Founded in 1996 on the banks of the Yangtze River, Chery’s first car rolled off the assembly line in 1999. It was originally known as Cheery and billed itself as a cheerful, low-cost brand. Now it sees itself in the mould of Toyota, synonymous with quality, and Tesla, which is known for its innovation.

“Our strategy, we call it ‘double T’,” Yin said at Chery’s global headquarters in the eastern city of Wuhu. “Toyota plus Tesla.”

That means producing cars with both the quality to win over customers for the long term and the advanced technology to attract younger buyers, he said.

Chery and competitors BYD and Geely are among the Chinese automakers upending the global industry with cutting-edge electric vehicles at prices traditional automakers cannot match. China’s annual auto show, held this year in Beijing and open to the public starting this week, is now the largest such event in the world.

Chery sold 2.8 million cars last year, up nearly 8 per cent from a year earlier, according to industry data. It is building its Ebro brand of cars in Spain with a local JV at a former Nissan plant in Barcelona.

“Right now it’s very good,” Yin said of the Spanish operation, adding that Chery wanted to “enlarge this capacity in Barcelona” and potentially export cars to other markets.

However, it was not sustainable to ship cars from one country to others in large volumes, he said. Instead, Chery wanted to manufacture more in local markets and was actively looking to partner with other automakers in Europe to share production facilities, Yin said, without providing details on which countries it was considering.

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“We can share profits, we can share models,” he said of potential tie-ups.

Global surge

Chery’s global sales have surged in recent years, almost quadrupling from 2020 to 2025. Still, the automaker remains well behind domestic rival BYD, which sold 4.6 million cars in 2025, becoming the world’s No 5 automaker by volume.

Chery launched two new international brands – Omoda and Jaecoo – in 2023. It sold 380,000 of the two brands combined last year and the company told dealers and staff over the weekend in Wuhu that it is targeting combined sales of one million vehicles in 2027.

The automaker hosted an “international business summit” in Wuhu over the past few days. Company representatives said some 4,000 people, including international dealers and suppliers, attended.

The Jaecoo 7 SUV has done particularly well in some markets and was Britain’s top-selling car in March.

Chery’s brands are heavily reliant on sport utility vehicles – 2.3 million out of the 2.8 million vehicles it sold last year worldwide were SUVs – and the company is now working on smaller models to broaden its lineup.

The push to build smaller is also a sign of Chery’s global ambitions. Chinese consumers traditionally prefer large cars, unlike Europeans, Yin said.

Like the rest of its domestic rivals, Chery has to contend with a brutal price war at home, where there are more than 100 auto brands. But Yin said that he believed a long-overdue shakeout in the industry was imminent.

“In a couple of years, maybe a very few can survive and be healthy,” he said. “Right now, it’s coming.” REUTERS