Chery plans a UK engineering base ahead of British-built cars
Chery will set up a passenger-car research and development site in Bedfordshire, England, later this year, deepening the Chinese group's push into Britain as it moves toward building vehicles there.
- ~8%
- 276,820
- 202,533
What Happened
The site will sit in Bedfordshire, an English county long associated with engineering and motorsport, and is due to open in the later autumn. Work will begin with tuning cars for British roads before widening to autonomous-driving and AI research, with the group saying it intends to hire locally over time.
The brand's UK sales have climbed fast. Chery, together with its Omoda and Jaecoo marques, took close to 8 percent of the British market in July, up from roughly 3 percent a year earlier, on SMMT figures.
Local assembly is already taking shape. In June the company struck a non-binding memorandum with Nissan for the Japanese firm to build Chery cars at its Sunderland plant, using an idle production line from next year. It would be the first large-scale British manufacturing by a Chinese car brand.
Exports are driving the wider business. Chery moved about 276,820 vehicles worldwide in July, of which 202,533 were shipped abroad, a 70 percent year-on-year jump.
Why this matters
Chery has become one of the fastest-climbing Chinese brands in the UK, and a local engineering base is a step toward making cars there rather than only shipping them in. It captures how Chinese makers are putting down roots in Europe instead of exporting alone.
Terms in This Story
- EV
- Electric vehicle, a vehicle powered fully or partly by electricity.
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