Everything you need to know about Chery
The 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed saw the UK launch of yet another Chinese car manufacturer, but this was a brand that knew exactly what to expect.
While cars with Chery badges were completely unknown to Goodwood visitors, they were more familiar with its two subsidiary brands, Omoda and Jaecoo. Launched in 2024, the two combined have as of August 2026 claimed 4.7% of the UK market, the sixth largest slice and outdoing big Chinese rival BYD.
Chery hasn’t done badly either. Its first cars only went on sale in September 2025 but 11 months later Chery’s year-to-date sales were at more than 21,000, outdoing such long-established names as Mazda, Citroën and Honda.
The arrival of cars wearing a Chery badge is just the centrepiece of a five-brand push by the overall Chery Automobile group. While not well known in the UK, Chery has been China’s largest vehicle exporter for decades.
Chery’s highly effective approach has been to focus particular brands on their likely rivals. Omoda, for example, tackles European brands such as Cupra, while Jaecoo targets Land Rover’s upmarket Range Rover models.
As well as parent brand Chery, the group is bringing one, possibly another two new badges to the UK. Lepas, launching in the Autumn of 2026, is a value-for-money proposition, while it’s yet to be confirmed if we will also get iCaur (sold in China as iCar), an off-road specialist brand.
Chery already has an agreement for one European plant, to build Omoda models in Spain, and in June 2026 signed a ‘memorandum of understanding’ with Nissan – this is widely predicted to see the latter’s UK factory in Sunderland turning out Chery models, potentially from 2027. Mind you the UK-built cars could also be those with Omoda or Jaecoo badges.
Also refusing to go away are rumours that Chery will take advantage of spare capacity at the UK plants of JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) – especially as the two companies already have an agreement to use the JLR-owned Freelander model name on SUVs that have just gone on sale in China and are widely expected to come to the UK.
So who or what is Chery?
Chery is young in terms of global automotive powerhouses, but one of the oldest in the Chinese car industry. Today, it’s rated the fourth of China’s ‘big four’ automotive groups in domestic Chinese sales, although it outsells all other Chinese car companies in export sales. It has always been state-owned.
The group was first formed in 1997 by a group of officials in the city of Wuhu, in the Anhui province of China. Chery’s first car was the Fengyun in 1999, which was based on the SEAT Toledo. It sold around 50,000 in Chery’s local Anhui province, but the brand was not permitted to sell cars in the rest of China until 2003 – a distinctive feature of China’s highly regulated automotive industry.
The company had a controversial first decade. It was accused by American giant General Motors of copying one of its cars, the Daewoo Matiz, with the Chery QQ in 2003. That was settled out of court, but Volkswagen then threatened a lawsuit over claims that Chery was using Volkswagen’s Chinese suppliers to effectively copy the Volkswagen Jetta (a saloon version of the Golf, as saloons have long been more popular than hatchbacks in China).
Meanwhile, Chery’s early attempts to sell cars in America through a deal with US company Visionary Vehicles collapsed and the US firm won a lawsuit against Chery for breach of contract.
Things eventually began to turn as Chery continued to invest in its own engineering capabilities. In 2007, the Chery A3 – no relation to the Audi A3 – was launched, styled by the famed Italian studio Pininfarina (better known for 50 years of being Ferrari’s preferred design house), and it proved a major success. The A3 also became the first Chinese car to gain a five-star safety rating from the country’s own version of Euro NCAP, By 2008, Chery was making its own-design engines and even selling them to Fiat, and by 2009 it was building more than half a million cars annually.
In that year, Chery became one of the earliest Chinese automotive manufacturers to begin making electric cars, while the company’s next move was to pivot away from its budget image and launch multiple car brands under the Chery group. Ambitions quickly exceeded reality, however, with some 100 different models planned and the company eventually scaled its plans back to a more manageable level.
In 2012, Chery signed a deal with JLR after several failed attempts to set up partnerships with other international manufacturers. This alliance has since seen the group making Range Rovers for the Chinese market, and even a version of the classic Mini Moke from the 1960s. JLR recently licensed the Freelander nameplate to Chery for a new range of EVs to be sold initially in China with ambitions to export them globally.
Chery revived its multiple brand strategy, the first of its new badges being Cowin and an upmarket badge called Exeed – plans to launch the latter in America have so far not been realised. Despite this, the company’s global export ambitions are undimmed, launching its ‘Double 50’ strategic plan in 2021 to target half a million annual exports. This plan succeeded beyond the management’s wildest dreams – in August 2026 Chery became China’s first automotive manufacturer to export more than 200,000 cars a month.
Those included the first moves into Europe – two new badges, Omoda and Jaecoo were unveiled as specific export brands in early 2023 and a year later both arrived in the UK. With yet more new names, Lepas and Icaur also being prepared for the British market, the arrival of cars wearing the badge of the original Chery brand surprised some onlookers.
When did Chery launch in the UK?
Chery arrived in the UK in September 2025, joining its Omoda and Jaecoo brands but building a dealer network separate to their outlets.
As is typical of the new breed of Chinese brands in the UK, this network has grown quickly with many well-known and long-established dealer groups rushing to add Chery outlets to their portfolios.
What models does Chery have and what else is coming?
Chery’s initial UK offerings were a pair of SUVs, the Tiggo 7 and the Tiggo 8, and in less than a year they have been joined by two more, the flagship Tiggo 9 and the most value-pitched model yet, the Tiggo 4.
All have been received in similar fashion, earning B-level Expert Rating scores of between 66% and 68% in The Car Expert’s Expert Rating index, with average media reviews offset by the cars’ value for money, strong equipment levels and seven-year warranties.
The Tiggo 7 is intended as a low-price mid-sized SUV and is available with either a 1.6-litre petrol engine or a plug-in hybrid petrol unit – the latter has two motors, one on each axle and can cover 56 miles on electric power only. Chery has Dacia’s recently launched Bigster firmly in its sights with the Tiggo 7 costing under £25k for the petrol version and under £30k for its plug-in sibling.
Current Chery range on our Expert Rating Index
The Tiggo 8 is effectively a larger Tiggo 7 – while it comes with the same choice of drivetrains, it has seven seats on offer at prices starting from under £29k for the base petrol model, while the top plug-in hybrid version is £8k more. It’s a car to take on the likes of the Skoda Kodiaq, Hyundai Santa Fe – and the Omoda 9 of Chery’s sister brand.
The Tiggo 9, launched in December 2025, is pitched as the range-topping model. Again it has seven seats with a plug-in hybrid drivetrain, at prices starting from £43k. Most of its rivals are also those of the Tiggo 8, though the Tiggo 9 is ranged against the most upmarket versions of those competitors and earned The Car Expert’s Best Large Car award for 2026.
Chery describes the Tiggo 4, arriving in showrooms from the late summer of 2026, as completing the Tiggo line-up. It’s a small crossover intended to rival cars such as the Toyota Yaris Cross, and the first Chery model with a full hybrid, as opposed to plug-in hybrid, powertrain. Prices start from just under £20k.
Chery is giving no clues as to what will follow the Tiggos into showrooms. But the brand has plenty of models to choose from, with a vast vehicle parc in its home market – any one of these could conceivably be readied for UK buyers, and perhaps even built here.
Where can I try a Chery car?
Chery has followed the lead set by Omoda and Jaecoo by moving to quickly establish an extensive dealer network, making a point of keeping its outlets separate from those of its sister brands. You won’t have to travel far to check out a Chery – by August 2026 the brand had established close to 100 outlets across the UK, the UK website including a dealer locator.
What’s particularly significant about this company?
Chery might not be a name familiar to UK motorists, even those who have got used to other heavily promoted Chinese brands such as BYD. But on the global automotive market, Chery puts all its home rivals in the shade.
The group has been China’s largest exporter of automobiles since 2003. In 2025 Chery exported 1.34 million vehicles across the world – and in future more and more of them are going to be coming to the UK.
What makes Chery different to the rest?
The traditional method of growing an automotive brand has been to offer a range of cars in different markets but under the same badge, the only expansion beyond this being the launch of upmarket sub brands such as Lexus from Toyota and Genesis from Hyundai. And generally the new Chinese entrants such as BYD and GWM seem to be following this model.
Not Chery – the group almost seems to want to launch new brand names more often than individual models. Even though it has pulled back from the excesses of the mid-2000s with more than 100 model lines, as of mid-2026 Chery has at least 14 different brands selling across the globe with well over 50 different models.
Summary
Following the progress of Chery’s expansion into the UK promises to be challenging, simply because the number of different areas the group is getting into – this is without doubt the most complex of all the new Chinese entrants coming into the UK.
However, the track record already established in only three years by Chery brands Omoda and Jaecoo, and added to by Chery itself over the past year, plus the recent export record of the group as a while, suggest that it will not be long before the Chery badge is just as familiar as those of BYD or Omoda.
This feature was originally published in August 2025 and updated in September 2026.
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