China's Chery seeks to be 'Toyota plus Tesla' as it targets global expansion
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 in an interview on Monday.
Founded in 1996 on the banks of the Yangtze River, Chery's first car rolled off the assembly line in 1999. People originally knew it as Cheery, and it called itself a cheerful, low-cost brand. Now it models itself on Toyota, which people associate with quality, and Tesla, which many link to 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 making cars with long-term quality and advanced technology to attract younger buyers, he said.
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Chery sold 2.8million cars last year, up nearly 8% from a year earlier, according to industry data. It builds Ebro cars in Spain with a local joint venture at a former Nissan plant in Barcelona.
“Right now it’s very good,” Yin said of the Spanish operation, adding that Chery plans to expand capacity in Barcelona and export cars to other markets.
However, it wasn't 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.
"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.
The graphic shows the dramatic growth of Chinese carmaker Chery, which quadrupled its sales from 2020 to 2025.
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 1 million vehicles in 2027.
The graphic shows the rapid growth of some Chinese automakers in Europe.
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 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".
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