On March 18, 2022, Chery Group ushered in the 25th anniversary of its founding.
From the "small grass house" on the desert beach to the "100 billion group" with annual revenue of nearly 150 billion yuan today;
From the first car to break the foreign technology blockade off the production line, to the cumulative sales of more than 10 million vehicles;
From the "Eight King Kongs" who started the business, to the 50,000 "Chery people" around the world today;
From the automobile manufacturing that started with the engine, to today's "automobile industry ecosystem" where many trees are lined up;
From the export of the first batch of 10 Chery cars in the first year of China's accession to the WTO, to the "Chinese business card" that ranks first in The export of Chinese brands for 19 consecutive years, and overseas users have exceeded 2 million...
Along the way, from scratch, from small to large... Chery's 25 years of "comparison between the past and present" are a vivid epitome of China's independent automobile brands forging ahead and constantly striving forward.
From "First Pile" to "Gigafactory"
On March 18, 1997, Chery laid the first pile of the factory on a desert beach north of Wuhu City. Today, the "first pillar of Chery" still stands in the engine plant, recording the entrepreneurial process of Chery people.
Starting from the first pile of the first engine plant, Chery built four major process workshops, and gradually formed a complete system capability integrating the research and development, trial production, production and sales of the whole vehicle, powertrain and key components. Today, 25 years later, the original "small grass house" has become Chery's more than 10 modern and intelligent production bases in the global layout today. These bases all adopt the same production management system, chery production method (CPS). Chery CPS is the sixth largest global co-production system after Toyota TPS, Volkswagen KPS, General GMS, etc., and the first global production management system of independent brands.
With the rolling tide of "new four modernizations", in February 2021, Chery Intelligent Network "Super One Factory" with a total investment of 13 billion yuan started construction. As a major "new infrastructure" project for Chery to accelerate its intelligent transformation, the Super One Factory is one of the first three high-end smart factories planned by Chery.
In August 2021, Anhui Haixing Cloud Internet of Things Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Chery Group, was officially established. Haixing Cloud will build the automotive industry's first large-scale customized industrial Internet platform, helping Chery and its upstream and downstream industry chains accelerate digital transformation, creating a replicable and promotable empowerment model, and helping China's automotive industry accelerate transformation and upgrading.
From second-hand production line to surging "Chinese heart"
Chery took the lead in laying the first pile of the engine plant, and it is also the first place in China to independently develop the "heart" of the car. At that time, China did not have a self-developed engine for cars. Creating a surging "Chinese heart" with independent intellectual property rights is the core technology of "card neck" that is urgently needed to be broken through in China's automobile industry.
Newborn calves are not afraid of tigers, and Chery chooses to gnaw the hardest bones first. At first, Chery bought used engine production lines that were eliminated from abroad, but soon found that the foreign engineers who came to assemble were passively sluggish, and several months passed, and the production line had not yet been assembled.
Chery people realize that the core technology must be firmly in their own hands, and everything must rely on themselves. After arduous independent research and development, Chery has successfully created the first independent engine brand in China's car industry - ACTECO. Up to now, the total number of Chery engines off the production line has exceeded 8.8 million units, including more than 500,000 sets of exports to developed countries and regions such as Europe, the United States and Japan; a total of 9 engines have won the title of "'China Heart' Top Ten Engines".
On December 18, 1999, Chery's first car, the "Fengyun" of 000001, slowly drove off the production line, playing a new movement of China's independent brand car manufacturing, and opening a breakthrough of Chery's independent car manufacturing "from 0 to 1".
In just 25 years, from the initial Chery "storm" stirred up the Chinese auto market, to today's Arrizo, Tiggo, EXEED Xingtu, Jietu, Kaiyi and other "stars shine" global market. Chery Group's automotive business has more than 10 automobile manufacturing enterprises such as Chery Automobile and Chery Commercial Vehicle, as well as joint ventures such as Chery Jaguar Land Rover and Kaiyi, creating a series of product brands, and the passenger car field has formed a comprehensive brand layout from "entry-level" to "luxury-level".
QQ, Qiyun, Fengyun, Son of the Orient, A3... Many of the classic models of the past are still galloping on the road; Tiggo 8, Arrizo, Xingtu Lingyun, Lanyue, Jietu Zilong, big ants, small ants, QQ ice cream... It's the year of Dangda; OMODA5, Tiggo 8 PLUS Kunpeng e+, Xingtu ET-i, Yaoguang... It represents Chery's young school, new energy and intelligent networking direction.
With the record sales of 962,000 vehicles per year in 2021, Chery Group's cumulative vehicle sales reached a new coordinate of "10 million units".
Among Chery Group's 10 million global automobile users, 2 million overseas users, Chery has also ranked first in the export of Chinese brand passenger cars for 19 consecutive years.
The rolling wheels in a foreign country have witnessed Chery's "going to sea" to promote its globalization strategy. As the earliest independent brand in mainland China to explore the international automobile market, Chery follows the "three-step" plan of globalization, from trade "going out" to "walking in" to "going up" to "going up" to "going up" to exploring the "Chery plan" for Chinese brands to implement the globalization strategy.
Today, Chery has established a global R&D system of "the sun never sets" including six R&D centers in North America, Europe, and Shanghai, as well as 10 overseas factories, more than 1,500 overseas distributors and service outlets, and the total overseas production capacity has reached 200,000 units/year. Chery's auto products are exported to more than 80 countries and regions around the world, of which 46 are countries and regions along the "Belt and Road", and Chery has also won the "Best Overseas Image Top 20 Enterprises" for five consecutive years.
From "Technology Chery" to "Two Wings"
Without core technology, there is no foothold, and there is no core technology to repay the country. Adhering to the innovation-driven Chery, Chery has been constantly polishing the golden signboard of "Technology Chery" and striving to build a "moat" for Chinese brands.
Taking advantage of the "new four modernizations" wave of the industry, Chery continues to deepen the traditional fuel vehicle track, focusing on the "one line, five floors" technical route, and accelerating the layout of new energy, intelligent networking, shared travel, platform and ecology. Up to now, Chery has applied for more than 23,000 patents and authorized more than 14,000 of them, including nearly 1/3 of the invention patents, ranking the forefront of the automotive industry. In the 2021 "Top 500 National Enterprises in Scientific and Technological Innovation" ranking, Chery Automobile ranked 21st.
If "Technology Chery" is the housekeeping foundation of Chery's establishment, then user thinking and Internet thinking are the "two wings" for Chery to accelerate its take-off.
Today's Chery adheres to the user-centered, provides accurate services around the "pain points" and "itch points" of users, and strives to create value for users; adheres to Internet thinking, creates an open system, and continuously expands Chery's technical boundaries, cooperation boundaries, and business boundaries.
Thanks to in-depth insight into customer needs, Chery won the second place in the sales satisfaction ranking of its own brands with a score of 732 in the 2021 China Automotive Sales Service Satisfaction Study (SSI) released by J.D.Power. Chery's "circle of friends" of open innovation has also become bigger and bigger, and has established "cross-border alliances" with Haier, JD.com, iFLYTEK and other enterprises to jointly explore the new format of "Internet of Things + automobile"; and cooperate with Huawei, Ali, Tencent, Horizon and other enterprises to accelerate the pace of industrial innovation and upgrading. Chery has also built an open co-creation platform, the iCar ecological platform, which links everyone's global life scenes with cars and creates a symbiotic ecology of intelligent life. iCar Ecology's first product, the pure electric boutique car "QQ Ice Cream", was officially launched in December last year, and the cumulative orders have exceeded 70,000 units.
According to the "14th Five-Year Plan", Chery Group's business will fully shift to the "new four modernizations" and achieve 100% new energy and 100% networking by the end of the "14th Five-Year Plan". In 2022, Chery will enter a new stage of enterprise development scale on the occasion of the "25th anniversary of entrepreneurship" and accelerate the next 10 million new mileage.
Source: Headline Studio All-media reporter Zhao Dandan
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