As one of the earliest pioneers of its own brand, Chery has not only witnessed the upward growth of China's auto industry, but also completed its transformation again and again in continuous self-breakthrough.
On August 5, Fortune Chinese released the 2024 Fortune Global 500 list. Chery Group topped the list with an operating income of US$39,091.7 million, ranking 385th. This result not only added another member to the "Top 500" lineup of Chinese enterprises, but also made Chery Group shortlisted for the first time, creating a new history.
It is reported that the total operating income of the Fortune Global 500 companies this year is about 41 trillion US dollars, an increase of 0.1% over the previous year, and the minimum threshold of the list is 32.1 billion US dollars. Among them, a total of 133 Chinese companies are on the list, and the total revenue of the companies on the list in 2023 is about 11 trillion US dollars.
From a "small grass house" to now on the list of the world's top 500, Chery is writing new glories with a new attitude. Chery's international vision also inspires Chery to continue to lead Chinese auto brands and explore a sustainable development path through the cycle with long-termism.
The world dream was born in the "small grass house".
Although "heroes don't ask where they come from", the success of the superior is not just luck, but step by step.
In the 20th century, the automobile industry was popular with this saying: "It is a fantasy that Chinese want to independently develop cars". At that time, China's auto market was dominated by foreign brands for a long time, and there was little room for independent brands, and products were labeled as "cheap" and "low-end".
From the government to the enterprises themselves, they are not satisfied with the status quo. Since its birth, the independent brand represented by Chery has shouldered a sense of mission to revitalize and build Chinese's own car brand.
It was at that time that the state made a strategic decision to develop and open up Pudong. Taking this as an opportunity, Anhui Province proposed to "develop the Wanjiang River and echo Pudong" and launched the "951 Project" in Wuhu. Here, Yin Tongyue and his team began the long entrepreneurial road of "making Chinese's own cars".
In 1997, Chery Automobile was established. For Chery, which is just starting out, the first hard bone that needs to be gnawed is the engine, which is known as the "heart" of the car. On May 18, 1999, the first engine rolled off the assembly line and was successfully ignited. Half a year later, on December 18, the first Chery car rolled off the assembly line; In 2001, Chery's first self-developed sedan "Fengyun" was launched, which soon became a dark horse sweeping the market.
With the accumulation in the early stage, Chery began to accumulate steadily, not only breaking the industry's common belief that "Chinese can't build cars", but also ranking first in China's own brand car sales for ten consecutive years.
But Chery wants much more than that. After experiencing the development process of creating something out of nothing in the early stage of entrepreneurship and growing from small to large, Chery has accumulated rich experience and then devoted itself to new energy. Chery in this period is undoubtedly decisive, when new energy vehicles are still not treated by the mainstream, they would rather "break their wrists" to sacrifice sales, but also bid farewell to extensive development and take the road of high-quality development.
The transformation was successful, and Chery subsequently completed a series of system construction, process reengineering, capital increase and share expansion, which fully stimulated the vitality of the system and mechanism, and ushered in a new round of take-off from 2020.
Especially in the past three years, in the context of the overall negative growth of the automotive industry, Chery has bucked the trend: from 2021 to 2023, the annual sales volume will reach 962,000 units, 1.233 million units, and 1.881 million units one after another, nearly doubling in three years.
At the same time, Chery's business scope has expanded to more than 80 countries and regions around the world, and has gained 14.2 million global users, including 3.9 million overseas users, ranking first in the export of Chinese brand passenger cars for 21 consecutive years. In 2023, one out of every three passenger cars exported overseas in China will come from Chery.
Entering 2024, Chery Group will continue to accelerate its rapid development, with sales exceeding 1.1 million vehicles in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 48.4%, creating a record high. At the same time, Chery Group is also the only one in the industry that has achieved "double growth" of new energy vehicles and fuel vehicles; Automobile companies with "double growth" in domestic and overseas markets.
Technology is the bottom, and going to sea is the sail
After 27 years of polishing, Chery has realized that the core element of success is technology.
From the engine, gearbox, and chassis in the past, to the current chips, battery cells, software, OS, smart cockpit, cloud platform, algorithms, etc., "Technology Chery" has an all-round layout across multiple tracks such as fuel vehicles, new energy, intelligent networking, and autonomous driving.
Up to now, Chery has applied for more than 31,000 patents, authorized more than 19,000 patents, undertaken more than 170 projects such as the national "Science and Technology Support Plan" and "Key R&D Program", won the "First and Second Prizes of National Science and Technology Progress Award" for many times, and was awarded the national "Innovative Enterprise" three times.
At the same time, Chery is also constantly attracting talents from all walks of life around the world, first laying out eight R&D centers and more than 300 Yaoguang laboratories around the world, and then establishing 50 R&D technical committees and 12 manufacturing technology committees, with more than 20,000 engineers and scientists.
In terms of strategic planning, Chery has comprehensively laid out the "Yaoguang 2025" forward-looking technology strategy: the strategy covers five core areas, including Mars architecture, Kunpeng Power, Male Lion Technology, Dazhuo Intelligent Driving, and Galaxy Ecology. Based on this, Chery has built 13 core technologies, including platform architecture, three-electric vehicles, intelligent driving, intelligent cloud platform, and ecological partners.
In terms of product play, Chery has always adhered to the path of synergistic and balanced development of oil and electricity, integrating the advantages of oil and electricity technology to provide better products for the market. At the same time, it also has the support of pure electric, hybrid, extended range, hydrogen energy and other multi-technology routes, forming three new energy sequences of Chery Fengyun, Xingtu Star Era, Jietu Shanhai and iCAR pure electric brands.
In terms of market layout, based on the in-depth operation of the globalization strategy, Chery has built a good pattern of international and domestic dual markets and dual circulation. From "going out" to "going in" and then to "going up", Chery continues to explore and practice, and continues to expand its overseas "circle of friends".
At the beginning of this year, Chery shared its corporate philosophy of "In somewhere, for somewhere", aiming to be a "fertilizer" and value contributor to overseas localities.
In the process of "going global", Chery has always adhered to two important principles: first, win-win cooperation with overseas countries and overseas partners, and cooperation in the whole value chain such as talent chain, innovation chain, industrial chain, and supply chain, so as to achieve achievement sharing; The second is to deeply integrate into the global automotive industry chain, promote localized development, be a local corporate citizen, and strive to contribute to the economic and social development of the countries where overseas markets are located.
At the Beijing Auto Show in April this year, Chery Group invited more than 3,000 overseas friends, including diplomats from ten countries, including Spain, Australia and South Africa, to participate in the booth activities. At the same time, more than 2,000 overseas partners were also invited to take the high-speed rail special train to Chery's Wuhu headquarters to participate in a series of activities such as the Global Co-creation Conference and the Kinabalu Music Festival.
It is worth mentioning that Chery regards itself as a part of the local economic and social development, both at home and abroad. In addition to carrying out public welfare actions such as environmental protection, targeted poverty alleviation, disaster relief, and donation to education on a global scale, Chery will also appear in the disaster relief of almost every major disaster in China in the past.
Facing the future, Chery will continue to move forward, adhere to the "four-way" development of brand upward, market upward, technology towards the future, and industry towards the whole value chain, and build itself into an out-and-out polygon warrior.