Author: Wang Shanshan

Braking is not admitting defeat; it is changing lanes. "Cannot live in past success," does not deny the past, but sees the future clearly.

Cars are not FMCG and should not chase short-term quick gains. But the reality is, the competition in the entire industry has degenerated into a racing game. Capital pressure, traffic frenzy, constantly squeezing automakers' development cycles. When everyone is accelerating, someone choosing to decelerate becomes an outlier.

Recently, the Chery Fengyun T7 went on sale. Chery Automobile Executive Vice President Li Xueyong went on stage and his first sentence silenced the venue for a few seconds: "Global cars, they can't be rushed."

In the current automotive industry, this sentence is almost going against everyone. Vehicle development cycles have been compressed from 48 months to 26 months, and bugs that should have been solved in the lab were directly handed over to owners for road testing. Chery took a completely opposite path. The Fengyun T7 underwent 2 years of planning and 3 years of R&D, completing 1.45 million kilometers in durability special testing. The homologous model Lepas L6 was launched in Thailand and pre-sold in South Africa first, refining the overseas market before returning to the domestic market, taking a non-mainstream "reverse listing" path.

This new car that chose to "make it slowly" tore open the most core proposition for Chery: When the entire industry is desperately stepping on the gas, why did Chery hit the brakes?

Why Step on the Brakes After 20 Million Units?

A month ago, on July 25, Chery's global cumulative sales broke through 20 million units. For any automaker, this is a moment worthy of a grand celebration. But Chery's celebration exuded abnormality from start to finish.

Not immersed in the number frenzy, Yin Tongyue said a paragraph of words publicly: "After 20 million, we will no longer participate in involution, no longer only pursue sales, but pursue brand moving upmarket, pursue more technical breakthroughs, and pursue greater improvement in customer satisfaction."

From an outsider's perspective, Chery which has been sprinting all the way seems to have no need to adjust. From 960,000 units in 2021 to 2.8 million units last year, the growth curve is pretty enough. But Yin Tongyue almost stepped on the brakes and turned the steering wheel.

Subsequently, Chery Automobile Executive Vice President Zhang Guozhong spoke even more transparently: "Chery cannot live in past success experiences. Facing rapid industry changes, some need minor adjustments, some even need restructuring, only in this way can we adapt to the development of the next cycle."

He gave an example. A few years ago, the industry mainstream judgment on future energy structure was hybrid 4, pure electric 3, fuel 3, but now pure electric growth speed and market share have long far exceeded initial expectations. "Such consumption trend changes come very fast and fierce. In the past, we thought Falcon 500 intelligent driving was enough, but starting from the second quarter, consumers want higher-order versions like Falcon 700 or even 900 more."

Changes come too fast. If Chery still clings to 20 years of past success experiences—continuing to rely on fuel vehicle dividends, continuing to prioritize sales, continuing to use past product definition logic to cope with the market—it is very likely to fall behind in the next cycle.

What Did We Do Right in the Past 20 Years?

To understand why Chery needs to "brake", we must first understand how Chery "ran" to today.

Chery's rise was itself a resistance to industry prejudices. In the 1990s, two phrases were popular in the Chinese automotive circle: Without joint ventures there is no way to live; do not talk about independent R&D until you reach the million unit scale. Chery simply did not believe it.

In 1999, the first independently developed engine ignited successfully. In December of the same year, the first "Fengyun" went off the line. Without joint venture endorsement and without existing systems, Chery hard-chewed core components like engines, transmissions, and chassis from scratch, becoming the first Chinese brand automaker to master core "three major components" technology. This persistence in independent technology R&D allowed Chery to dodge many automakers' "strangled throat" crises.

This road was walked correctly. In 2007, Chery became the first domestic brand to accumulate sales exceeding one million units. The QQ achieved a sales legend of 1.4 million units, allowing ordinary families to drive private cars. The Tiggo series, relying on high cost-performance and low maintenance costs, quickly expanded scale, accumulated massive users and a complete supply chain, completing the most critical initial accumulation for the enterprise.

The smartest move Chery made was stepping out of the country early. In 2001, the first batch of Fengyun exported to Syria, ranking first in Chinese brand passenger car exports continuously for 23 years. When all domestic brands squeezed in the domestic market for fierce close-quarters combat, Chery quietly paved global channels. Overseas markets have always been Chery's cornerstone; when domestic price wars don't make money, overseas markets provide stable financial support and hedge risks.

In summary, Chery's past success logic is not complicated: Use independent R&D to stabilize the chassis, use cost-performance to expand sales, use overseas to stabilize the core base.

This play style worked time and time again over the past 20 years. But now, the halo is dimmed.

Why Not Live in the Past?

The most fundamental change in the industry is: shifting from incremental expansion to stock competition. The extensive growth model of diluting costs by scale and exchanging price for volume has reached its end; industry profit margins dropped to 1.5%, even showing selling more means losing more. Desperately chasing sales is no longer making big and strong, but inefficient internal friction.

Another change is sector switching. What Chery is best at is hardware R&D and power technology in the fuel vehicle era. But the current competition core is electrification, intelligence, and software experience. In the past, we compared whether cars were durable enough and if power was strong enough; now we compare whether intelligent driving is easy to use and if the car system is smooth enough. Chery's steadily iterating pace was steady in the fuel vehicle era, but in the new energy era, it is slow.

There is another reality shortcoming: brand constraints. Relying on cost-performance to start is Chery's advantage, but also its biggest burden. In the minds of most consumers, Chery is "affordable family car", not associated with words like high-end, value, and premium. 20 million accumulated users are mostly affordable users, difficult to form brand premium. Without brand height, one can only be trapped in the low-end price band to fight.

What is harder to change than products and markets is organizational inertia. A play style successful for twenty years, enterprises will definitely form mental rigidity. Fuel vehicle experience, old project processes, sales-only evaluation methods, will be unconsciously applied to new energy and new models. This is the terrible thing about path dependency—experience that once led you to the peak will become walls trapping you. Zhang Guozhong said "some need minor changes, some need restructuring", the changes are not only cars, but the entire enterprise's thinking and system.

After Saying Goodbye to Shadows, Where Will Chery Go?

Restructuring has begun. The most intuitive signal is that in the past few years Chery did not shy away from holding many launches, 189 events were held in 2025, but since this year, media visits to Wuhu decreased by more than half.

Another manifestation is in sales. In the first half of the year, Chery issued 150,000 fewer cars domestically, actively squeezing out "water", significantly reducing dealer inventory, domestic retail about 412,800 units, down 36.4% year-on-year. This is growing pains, and also a necessary cost to repair the terminal price system. And overseas, 200,000 units monthly sales are becoming normal, July overseas sales share has quietly reached 70%.

Changes have begun to happen. On September 1, August sales data showed Chery single-month sales 280,128 units, among which exports 196,984 units, domestic sales 83,144 units. Compared to July exports first breaking 200,000 units, domestic sales about 74,000 units data, August domestic sales month-on-month rose by nearly 10,000 units. After continuous contraction for several months, the domestic core base showed signs of recovery.

Between one down and one up, Chery is completing a switch in development logic. In Zhang Guozhong's words, "No internal stability, no external strength", Chery is no longer solely reliant on the domestic fuel vehicle market, but has constructed two new growth curves: "Overseas + New Energy".

Internally, the brand matrix enters an integration period. Chery recently adjusted the reporting lines of the Exeed business unit, strategic center turning comprehensively to overseas; the Zhiji brand turned from pursuing single product explosion to "long-distance thinking". Although multi-brand same source overlap problems are not fundamentally resolved, actions to streamline SKUs and clarify positioning have been initiated. In new energy, gross margin in the first half of the year rose significantly from 5.2% to 12.8%, saying goodbye to low price volume, entering scale profitability cycle.

The listing path of the Fengyun T7 happens to illustrate this new logic. One car debuted first at Milan Design Week, then launched in South Africa and Thailand, accepted overseas consumer and market testing, refined and then returned to domestic—"Global cars, can't be rushed". Not competing with the industry on new speed, using product strength verified by the global market to speak.

Auto Times says:

The catch-up racing among Chinese brands continues to add intensity. BYD overseas sales in July reached 179,800 units, Geely raised export target to 920,000 units and impact million scale, Great Wall set 600,000 units target. Chery's first-mover advantage is being diluted, window of opportunity is narrowing.

Wanting to cross the cycle, Chery's path is already clear: Globalization shifting from "sell more" to "earn steady"; open both-way technical feedback channels between domestic and overseas; domestic market no longer blindly rush wholesale volume, focusing on product value competition. The core task of the domestic market is to become a test bed for intelligent new technologies, complete verification before feeding back global models.

For Chery, crossing 20 million units is not the destination, but a watershed. The braking Yin Tongyue stepped on is not admitting defeat, but changing lanes. Zhang Guozhong said "Cannot live in past success", not denying the past, but seeing the future clearly.

When noise subsides, this enterprise that walked out of Wuhu small huts, still uses near-stubborn simplicity ways, to walk a farther road.