Transformation of Chinese Automakers by 2025
Author: Great Zhangwei
The transformation pace and strategic goals of major Chinese automakers seem increasingly radical. Here are the 2025 plans proposed by some domestic giants:
- Great Wall Motor’s 2025 strategy: A cumulative R&D investment of CNY 100 billion ($14.8 billion) over five years, achieving global sales of 4 million vehicles, of which 80% will be new energy vehicles, with revenue exceeding CNY 600 billion ($88.8 billion).
- Geely Automobile’s “Smart Geely 2025” strategy: A research and development investment of CNY 150 billion ($22.2 billion) within five years, realizing the commercialization of L4 autonomous driving, and a sales target of 3.65 million vehicles by 2025.
- Changan Automobile’s 2025 strategy: It plans to invest more than CNY 80 billion ($11.8 billion) in key areas of new energy, intelligence, and digital transformation, to achieve the company’s transformation and the total sales target of 4 million vehicles by 2025.
Chery Automobile has also accumulated for many years. On September 16, at the “Yao Guang 2025 Chery Technology DAY”, Chery Automobile officially launched the “Yao Guang 2025” strategic plan.
Understanding “Yao Guang 2025”
Let’s start with the name and understand “Yao Guang 2025”:
Why “Yao Guang”?
Gao Xinhua, Executive Vice President of Chery Automobile and the President of the Automobile Engineering Technology Research Institute, explained that “Yao Guang” is the easternmost star in the Big Dipper. In ancient China, it was regarded as a auspicious star. This year is also the 25th anniversary of Chery’s establishment. Therefore, the release of the 2025 strategy is very appropriate.
This strategy includes Chery’s core technology accumulation and future R&D planning in the field of intelligent electric vehicles, including:
- Vehicle platform architecture: “Mars architecture”
- Various power forms such as hybrid, electric, and hydrogen: “Kunpeng power”
- Intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, and other intelligent sectors: “Lion Technology”
- Data application and partner ecology sector: “Galaxy ecology”
Based on these four core technology areas, Chery will invest in R&D to build 13 core technologies including platform architecture, “three-electricity” (electric motors, electric control, electric heating), intelligent driving, intelligent cloud platform, and ecological partners. Specifically, Chery plans to invest over CNY 100 billion ($14.8 billion) in R&D in the next five years, cultivate more than 20,000 R&D talents, including over 10,000 software talents, and build 300 “Yao Guang Laboratories” around the world to support cross-disciplinary research of technology.
Moreover, its R&D layout is globalized. Chery will simultaneously deploy six development centers in Wuhu, Shanghai, North America, South America, Europe, and Central Asia, implementing global integration management.If the 1000 billion yuan is allocated over the next five years, Chery Automobile, with over 960,000 cars sold in 2021 and annual revenue exceeding 100 billion yuan, spends about 20% of its annual revenue on R&D. This R&D investment proportion is unmatched by domestic independent automobile brands.
For reference, in the first half of this year, Great Wall Motors invested 5.11% of its revenue in R&D, BYD Auto invested 3.6%, and Changan Auto invested 3.41%.
In summary: be willing to spend money.
In addition to large-scale funding and talent investment, as well as deep research and development in core technology fields, Chery Automobile’s product high-end strategy is also an important goal of the “Yao Guang 2025” strategy.
Currently, Chery Automobile has three independent brands: Chery, Jetour, and Exeed. Chery and Jetour focus on the mid-to-low-end car market, while Exeed is a brand founded in 2018 that targets the mid-to-high-end market. However, the results show that Chery’s high-end strategy has had little effect. This is a widespread problem for all independent brands, as it is difficult to move upmarket.
Fortunately, Chery has found a good foothold: Huawei.
According to 36Kr’s report in June of this year, Chery Automobile has reached a cooperation agreement with Huawei’s Smart Selection Car Business, with at least two car models in collaboration. The successful representative of Huawei’s Smart Selection Car Business is the Wanjie Series, and Chery also wants to sound the horn of high-end development with Huawei’s help.
Subsequently, there were rumors that Chery intended to partner with Huawei to create a high-end electric vehicle brand. Based on the pure electric platform with the code name E0X, the first two cars planned are the E03, a pure electric sedan, and the E0Y, an SUV, with an E05 planned for later. In terms of intelligence, the E0X platform will be designed with high computing power, with the models equipped with urban scene-assisted driving capabilities.
Following the release of the “Yao Guang 2025” strategy, Gao Xinhua, executive vice president and dean of the Automotive Engineering Technology Research Institute of Chery Automobile, stated in an interview that the first high-end pure electric midsize sedan from Exeed, the E03, will be launched in the fourth quarter of 2023, based on the pure electric platform, with Huawei’s smart cockpit.
In terms of power, the E03 will be equipped with the latest Kirin batteries from CATL, with a pure electric cruising range of over 700 kilometers, and zero-to-100 km/h acceleration in 3 seconds. The new car also supports fast charging and can achieve 200 kilometers of range in 10 minutes. In terms of autonomous driving, it can achieve high-speed and urban navigation-assisted driving capabilities.Moreover, to our knowledge, Chery’s cooperation with Huawei Smart Selection Car is mainly based on the Sino-US brand, and there is currently no consideration for an independent brand. The E0X platform is the main vehicle platform for the cooperation between Chery XinTu and Huawei Smart Selection Car, and the performance of the subsequent E03, E0Y, E05 vehicles in terms of intelligence is definitely worth looking forward to.
In the next few years, the focus of external attention on Chery will mainly be on the landing of the “Yao Guang 2025” strategy and cooperation with Huawei Smart Selection Car and other business aspects.
Chery’s self-revolution
Compared with other independent brand car companies, Chery did not propose its own 2025 strategy at an early stage. The outside world may question whether Chery is following the trend, but Chery has its own development plan and technical reserves, and believes that it is natural and easy to release “Yao Guang 2025” at this time.
As mentioned earlier, the “Yao Guang 2025” strategy specifically includes four core technology fields: Mars architecture, Kunpeng power, Lion technology, and Galaxy ecology.
So what does Chery have now in these four major technology fields? What else needs to be done in the future?
Mars architecture: Platform first, then vehicle
Building a platform before building cars, while planning the electronic and electrical architecture of the vehicle, lays the foundation for subsequent intelligentization and provides more flexibility.
“Martian architecture” actually includes two key technologies: vehicle platform architecture and EEA electronic and electrical architecture.
Why is it called Martian architecture?
At the 2020 Beijing Auto Show, Chery XinTu brand released the M3X Martian architecture, where M represents Mars, 3 represents the core technologies of flexible hardware platform, intelligent network architecture, and powertrain, and X represents unlimited possibilities. The M3X Martian architecture is simply understood as “intelligent modular vehicle-building architecture.”
At the 2022 Chengdu Auto Show, the M3X Martian architecture was upgraded to version 2.0. This version achieved six technological upgrades in safety, comfort, power, and intelligence in the four dimensions, covering A+, B-class SUV/cars/MPV markets, with PHEV/ICE/REEV and other power forms, modular vehicle-building, and an inappropriate analogy is like “Transformers”.In the words of Chery, the M3X Mars Architecture 2.0 integrates Chery’s global top strategic resources, and is developed and manufactured according to luxury car standards. It is an advanced architecture that represents the flagship value and forward-looking technology of the Chery Jetour product, and is also the technological carrier that drives Jetour towards intelligent and electrified era.
Of course, M3X Mars Architecture 2.0 is not the end point of evolution, and new intelligent electric vehicle platforms will continue to emerge. For example, the E0X high-end intelligent electric vehicle platform mentioned earlier will also introduce Huawei’s technology and resources in the future.
In terms of vehicle platform architecture, Chery’s existing full range of products are developed based on four major product platforms: T1X, M1X, M3X, and new energy exclusive platform:
- T1X is a professional SUV platform, and the Tiggo 8, Tiggo 7, and Tiggo 5x are developed based on this platform.
- M1X platform is a sedan platform, mainly responsible for the development and production of Chery A-class and A+ class sedans, and can extend to support various products such as 7-seater MPVs, hybrid and pure electric vehicles. The Arrizo GX and Arrizo 5 were born on this platform.
- M3X is a modular high-end whole vehicle platform that is intelligent, connected, and electric, compatible with sedans and SUVs, and can develop traditional power and plug-in hybrid vehicle models. Multiple models of Jetour are built based on this platform.
- In terms of new energy exclusive platform, Chery has been researching and developing new energy technologies since 1999, and has cumulatively applied for more than 1,000 patents in the new energy field, of which more than 600 have been authorized patents. In the future, it will cover technologies such as pure electric, hybrid, range extender, and fuel cells.
In terms of electronic and electrical architecture, Chery has independently developed and mass-produced four generations of electronic and electrical architectures over the past 25 years. With the advancement of electrification, intelligence, and networking, EEA 5.0, which was pre-researched and developed starting from 2020, has three major upgrades:
- Hardware platform upgrade: using a central computation + regional control solution, realizing hardware pre-embedding, providing hardware foundation for platform expansion and software upgrade, with over 1,000 TOPS of AI computing power and 3T flops of image computing power.
- Communication architecture upgrade: using gigabit Ethernet and CANFD communication technology, microsecond-level latency can be achieved, and real-time information exchange can be provided. Dual ring redundant communication, single point of failure, backup communication immediately takes effect, building reliable communication.
- Software architecture upgrade: adopting the industry’s most advanced 6-layer architecture, realizing “double decoupling” of software and hardware and software layer decoupling, with full-stack software controllability.Additionally, the next generation electronic and electrical architecture (EEA 6.0) of Chery is also under research and will adopt both in-car and cloud servers to share computing resources.
At the “Yao Guang 2025” strategy conference, Chery also unveiled a super skateboard platform called EXIII, which is designed based on a separate decoupling design for the upper and lower body of the vehicle. The platform is capable of supporting different sizes, grades, and uses of electric vehicle models including sedans, SUVs, MPVs, pickups, box-type trucks, and autonomous driving minibuses. Products developed based on this platform will have characteristics such as all-line controlled chassis, new suspension, CTC batteries, hub motors, and support for pluggable EEA 6.0 electronic and electrical architecture.
Chery’s strategy in platform and architecture construction is ahead of its time, but the effect of landing mass production must ultimately be seen.
Kunpeng Power: I Want All of Them – Hybrid, Pure Electric, and Hydrogen Fuel
In terms of power systems, Chery has its own “Kunpeng Power,” which is installed in Chery, Jetour, Xingtu, and other brand models. It includes five core technologies: hybrid engines, hybrid gearboxes, electric drives, batteries, and hydrogen energy.
At present, Chery has its own special hybrid engine in the field, which is used in its own hybrid models. The fifth-generation hybrid engine of Kunpeng Power has a maximum effective thermal efficiency of over 44%. As a transitional product to the comprehensive transformation to new energy, this engine has considerable advantages.
In terms of electric drive, Chery is developing the intelligent single-motor electric drive, as well as the intelligent vector control dual-motor system.
The single-motor electric drive has an 800V voltage platform, SiC power module system, a maximum power of 265kW, and a maximum torque of 5000N·m. The dual-motor system can have a power of 400kW and a torque of 6000N·m.
Regarding power batteries, Chery also has its own plan. At the “Yao Guang 2025” strategy conference, Chery stated that its high-energy battery products based on CTB technology will be launched in 2023, with a range of up to 700+ kilometers and capable of charging for 10 minutes to have a range of 200 kilometers with an 800V high-voltage platform.
By 2025, Chery will also launch a brand new power battery product based on CTC technology, with a range of over 1000+ kilometers and capable of charging for 15 minutes to have a range of 600+ kilometers. It adopts a new large cylindrical battery cell, which is characterized by long range, fast charging, and high safety.In addition, Chery is also positioning itself in the hydrogen fuel cell system. Its maximum effective energy conversion efficiency exceeds 60%. Among them, the hydrogen fuel cell system with a stack power density of 4.0kw/L and a lifespan of over 20,000 hours will be mass-produced in 2023. The hydrogen fuel cell system with a stack power density of 5.0kw/L and a lifespan of over 30,000 hours will be mass-produced in 2025.
According to Chery’s plan, in the field of new energy, its goal is to cover various segmented markets, including A-level to C-level sedan products and B-level to D-level SUV products, with power forms including pure electric, plug-in hybrid, extended range and hydrogen fuel cell.
However, based on its current track record, Chery’s new energy vehicle sales rely mainly on small vehicles such as Q Q and Little Ant. Chery needs a mainstream intelligent electric vehicle product to enter the market and become a sales hit and prove the appeal of its products.
Lion Tech is currently an important platform for Chery’s automotive intelligence.
In April 2018, Chery released the “Lion” intelligence strategy, which includes “Intelligent Driving”, “Intelligent Cloud”, “Intelligent Manufacturing”, “Intelligent Winning” and “Intelligent Mobility”. The strategy involves five sectors: autonomous driving, vehicle networking, digital marketing, mobile travel and intelligent manufacturing. Chery also established Lion Automobile Technology Co., Ltd., of which cross-border experts from the automotive and Internet circles, Dr. Xuebin Wu, serves as CEO.
In fact, Chery has been involved in developing intelligent driving technology for a long time.
From 2010 to 2013, Chery mainly researched and developed active safety technology and during this period launched Little Ant concept car, which included vehicle detection, front collision warning, lane detection, and vehicle departure warning technologies. Since 2014, Chery has been constructing an intelligent driving platform, setting up the Wuhu Auto Industry Technology Research Institute Co., Ltd., and completed the development of the first generation intelligent car by the end of that year.
Furthermore, Chery has always been a core member of the Baidu Apollo program:
- as early as August 2016, Chery and Baidu jointly launched a fully electric unmanned vehicle based on Chery eQ car;
- in November of the same year, the eQ unmanned vehicle developed by Chery and Baidu was operated for the first time on open urban roads in China at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang;
- in April 2017, Chery and Baidu signed a strategic cooperation agreement to deepen their cooperation in the intelligent automobile field;
- in January 2018, the Chery Arrizo 5, equipped with Baidu Apollo autonomous driving technology, made its debut at the CES in the United States.
After Lion Tech was established in 2018, the cooperation between Chery and Baidu Apollo in the field of intelligent driving has deepened further. At the 2021 Shanghai Auto Show, Chery and Baidu Apollo launched a comprehensive strategic cooperation on vehicle-cloud integration to jointly develop autonomous driving, big data, and automobile safety engines.Chery has always insisted on the two-pronged approach of self-research and external supplier integration in the field of intelligent driving technology. Major external suppliers include Bosch, Baidu Apollo, and Huawei in the future.
According to Chery’s latest plan in the “Yao Guang 2025” strategy, Chery will be self-developing the Chery Pilot platform, which includes intelligent driving products and research and development capabilities. Chery also hopes to build self-developing capabilities in the field of intelligent driving.
According to the plan, Chery currently:
- has completed the development of Chery Pilot 2.0 for the autonomous driving platform;
- will achieve the establishment of 3.0 between 2023-2024, which can provide functions such as multi-lane driving in urban areas, valet parking, and navigation-assisted driving on highways and in the city;
- will complete the establishment of 4.0 in 2025, which can realize autonomous driving capabilities in urban multi-lane driving, open areas, road-car-cloud collaboration, and navigation-assisted driving in the city;
- will also launch an immersive cockpit based on the next-generation fusion architecture of Chery Pilot.
Chery revealed that the Chery Pilot 3.0 intelligent driving system can connect up to 48 sensors in the vehicle, including a maximum of 5 lidar, 13 cameras, and up to 30 other various radars and other sensors. The highest computing power of the chip exceeds 1000 TOPS, according to this calculation.
Will Chery’s intelligent driving system also use Nvidia’s Orin chip? The outside world can have some expectations for Chery’s Chery Pilot 3.0 intelligent driving system.
In fact, Huawei’s MDC autonomous driving computing platform is applied on Chery’s latest SUV “Xingtu Yaoguang” (AtlantiX concept car), and installation space for lidar is also reserved.
Regarding intelligent cabins, Chery has Xiongshi Technology’s self-researched Xiongshi Zhicloud system, which has in-depth cooperation with Baidu’s Xiaodu Car-Mounted Application Ecology and the vehicle system.
From a product layout perspective, the first Xiongshi Zhicloud 4.0 intelligent cabin has been mass-produced on fuel vehicle models since 2020. This year, the intelligent cabin has upgraded and deployed on fuel and hybrid vehicle models; in the future, the Xiongshi Zhicloud intelligent cabin will also be upgraded to 6.0 in 2023-2024 and deployed on E0X platform architecture models. The 7.0 version of the “Space + Metaverse” intelligent cabin will be upgraded in 2025 and will be deployed on all vehicle models.
## Lion Cloud 5.0 Debuts on Latest Chery Tiggo 7 Plus
In terms of specific mass-produced car models, Lion Cloud 5.0 will make its debut on the latest Tiggo 7 Plus, equipped with dual screens and Qualcomm 8155 chips. In the future, Lion Cloud will also build cockpit experiences based on Qualcomm chips.
Galaxy Ecosystem: Continuous OTA
The final “Galaxy Ecosystem” actually refers to the capability of smart cars for upgrade and data sharing and co-creation, consisting of:
- 1 car model
- 3 major technical supports: Cloud Platform, Smart Data, and Intelligent Upgrade
- N ecological partners
This ecosystem uses cars as the data carrier and applies anonymization and cleansing to data on the labeling platform, algorithm platform, and simulation platform, protecting user privacy and laying a foundation for subsequent product functionalities such as breakpoint upgrading, multi-end promotion, data analysis, SOTA, FOTA, merge upgrading, and version management software warehouse.
With so many technical reserves, forward-looking technology research and development, and development planning, all of these must be landed on the product side to be perceived and applied by consumers.
So how does Chery plan to implement this in product planning?
Chery Cars Hunger for High-end: EXEED Continues to Seek
If Chery does not launch a new high-end brand, the burden of its high-end exploration will still fall on the EXEED brand.
EXEED brand is currently Chery’s demonstration field for the most advanced technology, where Chery’s many cutting-edge technologies will be grounded in EXEED models. At the same time, these models will also incorporate the most advanced technologies from various modules in the industry, to ensure the tonality and product competitiveness of high-end brands.
Currently in EXEED’s product lineup, the concept car AtlantiX has received a lot of attention, with the internal code name M38T, built based on the M3X Mars architecture 2.0, and the Chinese name “Yao Guang”. This car should be the first car model of Chery’s “Yao Guang 2025” strategic opening.
From some official images released so far, the EXEED Yao Guang is expected to have a car model version equipped with LiDAR. In terms of power, in addition to the fuel version, there will be hybrid version car models released in the future.
At the “Yao Guang 2025” strategic release conference, Chery also released the GENIE concept car, showing its vision of future smart electric vehicles.Going further, the first high-end pure electric mid-size sedan E03 from Chery Xingtu will be launched in the fourth quarter of 2023. The new car is built on a pure electric platform with Huawei’s intelligent cockpit and CATL’s Kirin battery. It also features highly autonomous driving capabilities for highway and urban navigation assistance.
This car will be the benchmark model for Chery to enter the mainstream intelligent electric vehicle market.
Chery has been established for 25 years, with sales reaching a historical milestone of 960,000 vehicles in 2021, but excluding the joint venture brand Chery Jaguar Land Rover, the prices of Chery’s sold models are all in the mid-to-low-end range (60,000 – 180,000 RMB).
Looking at the data in 2021:
- Chery brand’s annual sales were 656,800 vehicles, with the main model being the Tiggo 8 family positioned at 80,000 – 180,000 RMB;
- Jetour brand had 154,000 annual sales, covering the price range of 65,000 – 160,000 RMB;
- Xingtu brand had 37,200 annual sales, covering the price range of 110,000 – 220,000 RMB;
- Chery’s new energy passenger and commercial vehicles achieved a total sales of 95,625 vehicles, with the Chery Little Ant achieving 89,682 vehicle sales which covered the price range of 70,000 – 100,000 RMB.
This sales matrix is definitely unsatisfactory for Chery, especially with the bleak annual sales figures for the Xingtu brand.
By contrast, other leading domestic independent auto brands have already achieved significant sales figures with their high-end electric vehicle models. BYD’s Han EV, priced at 200,000 – 300,000 RMB, has sold more than 20,000 units per month. Geely’s dedicated high-end EV brand, Zeekr, delivered more than 40,000 units within a year, with a positioning of 300,000 – 400,000 RMB. Other examples of high-end EV brands include Changan Eado, whose starting price is 350,000 RMB, and leading models from BYD, Geely, Great Wall Motors, SAIC Motor, Dongfeng Motors, and BAIC Motors, all priced at around 350,000 – 400,000 RMB.
From 2023 to 2025, the domestic high-end new energy vehicle market will undoubtedly be a battleground.
Chery also has a dream of going high-end, and this dream needs a powerful push.
Chery + Huawei: A High-end Brand Breakthrough
This push could come from Huawei. If Chery’s models enter Huawei’s smart selection car business cooperation model, related models will have the opportunity to be further upgraded in terms of their product power. At the same time, they can leverage Huawei’s sales channel capabilities to increase their fighting capacity.
In fact, whether it is Chery’s cooperation with Huawei’s smart selection car model based on Xingtu, or the joint creation of a high-end intelligent electric vehicle brand with Huawei, it is a good attempt for Chery.
However, Chery needs to have stronger self-research capabilities, and be more proactive. As can be seen from the “Yao Guang 2025” strategy, this independent brand automaker strives to master all aspects of R&D and manufacturing of intelligent electric vehicles, and even if not doing full-stack self-research, it also wants to master the corresponding Know-How technology.So, it makes sense to bring some models to cooperate with Huawei Hi in order not to give away the “soul” entirely.
In fact, Chery and Huawei’s cooperation began several years ago:
- In May 2020, one year after the establishment of Huawei’s car BU, Huawei set up the “5G Automotive Ecosystem” and Chery was one of the first 18 companies.
- Also in that year, the Chery Jetour X70 PLUS was released, equipped with Huawei HiCar’s intelligent interconnected full-scenario solution.
- At the end of 2020, Chery and Huawei signed a comprehensive framework agreement for cooperation.
The two sides plan to cooperate comprehensively in the fields of intelligent automotive electronic and electrical architecture, intelligent networked vehicles, intelligent cabins, on-board computing and automatic driving, intelligent energy, and intelligent vehicle cloud services.
In March 2021, Chery Jetour also announced deep cooperation with Huawei. Both parties will conduct research in the cooperating areas of electronic and electrical architecture, on-board computing, and automatic driving. In the future, Chery Jetour will also join hands with Huawei to establish a joint innovation laboratory, extending to more cooperating areas such as intelligent networked vehicles, intelligent cabins, intelligent energy, vehicle networking cloud services, and international business development.
In July 2021, Chery Jetour X-1 (later renamed as Jetour Dasheng) officially debuted, equipped with Huawei’s iDVP intelligent digital car platform (including computing and communication architecture CCA, on-board operating system, multi-domain collaborative software framework HAS Core, and complete vehicle-level tool chain), which is also equipped with Huawei HiCar scheme.
Through these cooperations, the relationship between Chery Automobile Group and Huawei has become closer, involving each sub-brand.
However, the problem is that these cooperations have not made the decent sound compared with Huawei’s Hi cooperation model and Huawei’s Smart Selection Car cooperation model, which have failed to attract more consumers’ attention and discussion.
Seeing that in the past two years, Seres has relied on Huawei Smart Selection to create an “Ask” brand, which is increasingly favored by consumers, Chery also hopes to fulfill its dream of high-end smart electric cars.
Next, let’s see if Chery Star Journey and Huawei Smart Selection can create new success on the E0X platform.
In addition, in terms of Chery’s new energy, there is also an opportunity to challenge high-end pure electric vehicle models, and the same can develop imaginative cooperation models with Huawei Car BU.
From the “Yao Guang 2025” strategy, we can see Chery’s determination in the reserve of smart electric car technology, in the past 25 years, Chery Automobile has applied for more than 23,000 patent technologies, ranking among the forefront of China’s automobile industry.From Chery’s attempts to actively partner with leading industry suppliers in automatic driving and intelligent cockpit such as Baidu Apollo and Huawei Car BU, it can be seen that this veteran automaker is not conservative.
Only by cultivating inner strength and supplementing external supply can there be a chance to regain the market share in the highly competitive Chinese market for smart electric vehicles. The investment of 100 billion yuan over 5 years may result in short-term loss of profits, but it brings Chery a promising future in the long run.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.