THE Chery Automobile Co. LTD and United Asia Automotive Group, Inc. (UAAGI) have officially entered into a distributorship agreement on October 15 in Wuhu, China. The accord was signed by Zhang Guibing, president of Chery International, and Rommel Sytin, president of UAAGI, which is also the distributor of Foton, another China-made brand, in the Philippines.
This is the fourth time that Chery will be reintroduced in the country as previous partnerships and operations did not prosper. According to Zhang, however, he is sure that this time it will be successful because of UAAGI’s good reputation and commitment to its customers.
Zhang said, “UAAGI has a vast experience in marketing and after-sales service, as well as a deep insight into consumer concerns. By working with UAAGI, Chery will not only further expand its overseas sales network, but also accomplish localized operations, and provide better products and services to Philippine consumers.”
“As an important ASEAN market with a population of over 100 million, the Philippines has developed rapidly with its GDP growth of over 6.5 percent annually. The Philippines’ annual automobile demand is nearly 400,000 units, combined with a sound automotive matching system and labor cost advantage. Operating in the Philippine market will lay the groundwork for Chery to develop the rest of ASEAN,” added Zhang.
“For UAAGI, what we can promise is that we can focus on our customers, both previous and future—internally and externally,” said Sytin. “We will prepare our showroom for a customer experience and provide after-sales and service experience. We are planning to have 10 dealerships this year initially and eventually have 30 in two years. We will offer the most affordable vehicles,” added Sytin.
While developing in Southeast Asia, Chery has seized the new opportunity from the “Belt and Road” initiative to constantly speed up globalization in the recent years. So far, Chery has exported its products to over 80 countries including electric vehicles, established 10 plants and over 1,300 sales service networks worldwide, registered a cumulative export volume of 1.5 million units, and has emerged as the largest Chinese passenger vehicle exporter for 16 consecutive years.
Over the years, Chery has upheld the concept of “openness, equality, cooperation and win-win” and has paid special attention to sharing its advanced production and R&D capacity worldwide. 65 percent of Chery’s exported vehicles were localized. In fact, Chery is gradually accomplishing localized R&D, purchase, manufacturing and testing by establishing the European R&D Center, the Middle East Research Institute, the Brazil R&D Center and other global research platforms. Besides, Chery has achieved brilliant results in international talent training, smart mobility, adaptive product development and local plant construction, realizing the goal of win-win, co-building and sharing.
Chery Philippines will launch the vehicles before the end of the year although they have not disclosed which vehicles they will be bringing in. They said that it will be four SUVs, and this writer is guessing that it can be any of the Tiggos and Exeeds that we recently saw at the Chery headquarters, assembly plant and tested in Wuhu.
The Exceed TX, LX and XL debuted at the International Motor Show Germany in September 2017 in Frankfurt, and they have been offered in China beginning June 2018. The Exceed is based on the M3X platform from Chery.
At the 2019 Shanghai International Auto Show, Chery showed off the Chinese-spec models under the new Exeed brand. Unlike the vehicle shown in Frankfurt, this version features no Chery branding whatsoever, instead it features a larger grille without the Exeed name.
The Tiggo 8, meanwhile, was designed by Chery’s international design team under the lead of former BMW famous designer Kevin Rice. In terms of body details, the Tiggo 8 has a continuous LED tail lamp with auspicious textures in the tail design, which makes the whole car more scientific and technological, while also incorporating a strong sense of movement gene.
Both the Exeed and the Tiggo 8 are seven-seater SUVs with a flexible layout of 5 + 2 seats—a unique second row of seats sliding back and forth. Inside the vehicles, the luxury of the Tiggo 8 and Exceed wide-body cockpits is readily apparent. The design of three large screens is very eye-catching and the 12.3-inch full LCD dashboard and 10.25-inch central control panel in the Tiggo 8 is quite appealing. The Tiggo 8 has the added plus of an eight-inch smart air conditioning LCD touch screen. The intelligent multi-function dashboards of both vehicles have prominent functions, such as full-screen navigation display, scene display of multiple intelligent driving assistance system, and random switching of instrument layout. At the same time, the three screens can also realize interactions.
The Tiggo 8 is powered by a 2.0T engine and a CVT25 transmission. During the test drive, it showed impressive overall performance. Speeding up from zero to 100Km/h only took 7.0 seconds. According to Chery, the Tiggo 8 can attain a maximum speed of 200 KM/h. The maximum power and the peak torque generated by the engine are 125 kW and 250 N-m, respectively. Both the Tiggo 8 and Exceed are equipped with top safety features. According to the manufacturer, only 1.5T engines will be fitted into the vehicles destined for overseas markets.
Zhang intimated that, “Chery chose UAAGI because of our long standing relationship and their success with Foton. It is my wish that Chery cars will be the choice of Filipinos.”
Image credits: Tet Andolong