Chery's joint venture plant in Spain saw its first vehicle roll off the assembly line on November 23, the S700 under EV Motors' Ebro brand.
Chery's joint venture plant with Spain's EV Motors in Barcelona saw its first vehicle roll off the production line, as Chinese carmakers begin to ramp up production overseas to avoid shocks including tariffs.
The joint venture plant saw the first vehicle roll off the line on November 23 local time, an S700 under EV Motors' Ebro brand, Chery said in an announcement yesterday.
Chery announced in April that it had signed an agreement with EV Motors in Barcelona to plan a new joint venture to produce new models under the Chery and Ebro brands.
The Chinese carmaker planned to begin production of models, including its Omoda, first in the third or fourth quarter of this year, with annual production expected to reach 50,000 units by 2027, rising to 150,000 by 2029, according to an announcement at the time.
This is Chery's first production base in Europe, and makes the company the first Chinese automaker to start producing passenger cars in Europe.
Chery's Chinese counterpart BYD (HKG: 1211, OTCMKTS: BYDDY) announced late last year that it would build a passenger new energy vehicle (NEV) plant in Hungary, and signed a land pre-purchase agreement with the government of the city of Szeged at the end of January this year.
The plant would be up and running in three years and would mainly produce passenger car models for sale in Europe, BYD said on January 31.
Chery and EV Motors planned to invest about 400 million euros in the Zona Franca plant, which is a restart of a Nissan plant that had been shut down in 2021.
Founded in 1954, EV Motors produced agricultural vehicles and machinery in its early days. The Spanish carmaker began a transition to electrification in 2015, releasing the Ebro all-electric pickup truck in late 2022.
In 2023, Chery exported 937,148 vehicles, up 101.1 percent year-on-year, the highest export volume of any Chinese automaker.
Chery's exports are concentrated in regions such as Central Asia, South America and the Middle East, with around 10 production sites currently located mainly in South America, the Middle East and Russia.
The company would see annual exports exceed 1 million units for the first time this year, Chery said yesterday.
Chery produced 1,125,774 vehicles in the January-September period, of which 829,353, or 73.67 percent, were used for exports, according to a report by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV last month.
The European Commission announced on October 29 that it had closed its anti-subsidy investigation into imports of pure electric vehicles (BEVs) from China, deciding to move forward with imposing additional tariffs.
Spain abstained in the vote in early October.
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