Chery chairman Yin Tongyue told The Independent that the company wants to own iconic British marques and has received strong backing from the UK government, including two meetings with the Prime Minister. The government expressed a desire to revitalise the UK automotive industry after a period of decline since 2016, Yin said. Chery also promised to invest in local teams, engineering, and potentially manufacturing capacity, with a strategy of 'in the UK for the UK'. The company has held talks with Nissan about using its Sunderland plant, major media reported.
Chery's multi-brand assault on the UK includes the Freelander joint venture with JLR—described as a 'British premium intelligent all-terrain brand' with a planned range of six SUVs. The Freelander models are designed by JLR in the UK but built by Chery in China, and UK retailers have expressed interest in selling them. Other brands include the Chery nameplate launched in 2025, the design-led Lepas arriving later this year, Jaecoo (whose Jaecoo 7 was the UK's best-selling new car in March 2025), the Delivan commercial vehicle range targeting Ford Transit, and the iCaur brand (known as iCar in China) with models V23 (all-electric, 300-mile range) and V27 (range-extender hybrid with over 100 miles electric range). iCaur already sells right-hand drive in Malaysia.
We try to be a citizen of the UK.
Chery is also interested in reviving old British brands, according to president Guibing Zhang. Yin Tongyue noted that a UK brand like MG is 'very fancy' and successful, and suggested Chery could acquire a local brand to re-establish. The company's Freelander family already demonstrates its capability, Yin said, and Chery is planning to set up a trading company in the UK.
The UK is a very special country. It’s a big country with high technology, a lot of innovation and it’s the finance centre in the world.
The UK has a very good relationship with the European Union and United States, so everything we try to be. We strongly prepare to be local: local engineering, local R&D, local finance, local manufacturing.
We get a lot of support from JLR, people work very closely.
And so, we have some responsibility to make JLR bigger and great again.
Once I have a JLR, once I have a Chery, I own it. And then maybe we can get some local brand to be realised again.
The Freelander – we already make a whole family... If available, we want a UK brand. A UK brand is very fancy, such as MG – it’s very successful.
We get very strong support from the UK. Just in recent times we have twice met the Prime Minister, once in Beijing and once in London.
The UK government just said that the UK used to be the biggest car maker in the world, but from 2016 the government was a mess. So how can we make [the UK] fly again? This is what we want.
We also promised to the government to try to do our best. We invest to have some local teams behind local people. Maybe we try to use some capacity locally – this is the situation.
We just say: be somewhere, for somewhere. We say in the UK for the UK.