Chinese brand Chery Auto has just officially landed in Europe with the opening of a design and development center just outside of Frankfurt, Germany.
The company is now hiring the inaugural staff for the facility, ahead of the brand’s official market launch in 2020. According to Autocar, the company plans to hire between 30 and 50 people before the end of 2019 in order to better help it craft products which will appeal to European shoppers.
The brand is looking to hire a team of European experts, hopefully, a few of which it can poach from established European brands, to work out of its Raunheim facility. The focus of the hirings will be design, development, along with sales and marketing.
"At last year's Frankfurt motor show, we presented ourselves as a brand. Now we're going to execute our plans in and for Europe,” said Tongyue Yin, Chery chairman. “We will, therefore, be launching models from our high-end brand Exeed. They will be competitive with the leading European manufacturers in terms of quality, design, and technology.”
The brand’s first offering in Europe is expected to be the TX SUV, however, it’s assumed Chery will sell an updated version of the car it showcased in Frankfurt last year. The brand is also expected to focus on efficient hybrid technology, with the TX envisioned to offer a gasoline-electric hybrid, a plug-in hybrid, and pure-electric powertrains. It’s believed the plug-ins will be the quickest versions, capable of hitting 62 mph in 6.0 seconds.
It’s also believed that the company’s Exeed sub-brand will only offer electrified models, which Chery hopes will compete with an ever-expanding number of all-electric SUVs from marquee brands like Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW, and Tesla. However, none of the vehicles will be produced in Europe, Chery has already partnered with Jaguar Land Rover to produce it Chinese-market models, so the brand will be hoping to inject some of that prowess into their models for export.
No comments:
Post a Comment