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. It was originally known as Cheery and billed itself as a cheerful, low-cost brand. Now it sees itself in the mold 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% 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 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.
&uuid=(email))