Chery Automobile will enter the European market with its SUV models from three different brands over the next two years.
The Chinese car manufacturer, ranking eighth among Chinese car manufacturers in terms of sales in 2022, joins a growing list of Chinese carmakers expanding their operations in Europe amid intense competition in the domestic market and slower growth.
Jochen Tueting, CEO of Chery Europe, confirmed that the company has plans to launch its Omoda and Jaecoo brands in key European markets, including Germany, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, and France.
Moreover, by late 2025, they plan to introduce three SUV models for each brand, including fully electric, internal combustion, and hybrid vehicles, to cater to various regions in Europe.
Tueting emphasized that EV sales are higher in Western European countries than in Southern markets.
“We’re heavily focusing with these two brands on the growing SUV segment in order to ensure that we can develop significant sales relatively fast,” he noted.
In this regard, Chery’s third brand, the fully electric Exlantix, will debut with fully electric models in early 2025.
Earlier this year, Huawei Technologies announced a partnership with Chery and Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group to develop electric vehicles.
However, although that partnership features the same electric vehicle platform as the Exlantix brand, Huawei’s project is focused on the Chinese market, Tueting said.
Chery plans to begin sales of the combustion engine version of its compact crossover Omada 5 in Spain later this year, offering a fossil fuel version and a fully electric version in Germany starting in April.
The selling price of the Omada 5 will be approximately 30,000 euros, expected to be highly competitive.
It’s worth noting that the European Commission has initiated an investigation into potential tariffs to protect EU car manufacturers from cheaper Chinese EV imports.
Nevertheless, Tueting indicates that Chery is not concerned about the investigation, as if its brands perform as expected, it could establish an assembly plant in Europe as early as 2024.
“Wherever we get confidence from the market that we can sell proper volumes, that’s for us the indication we should have local production as well,” he said.
Despite this, Chinese electric vehicle brands face challenges in Europe, such as low brand recognition and high import costs.
Therefore, Chery is assessing whether to acquire an existing assembly plant from a legacy manufacturer or build one from scratch.
Currently, the company operates ten assembly plants outside of China.
This year, it expects to double the 450,000 vehicles it exported in 2022, bringing total unit sales for 2023 close to 2 million vehicles, as reported by Reuters.
