China's Chery Automobile is moving to diversify its model mix in Europe away from an SUV-dominated roster toward smaller cars, but the engineering work to underpin compact models has only just begun and no launch dates have been disclosed, a senior company executive said.
Chery, described as China's largest car exporter, sells vehicles under several marques that are driving its expansion in Europe, including Chery itself and the Omoda and Jaecoo brands. The group's Lepas nameplate, introduced last year, currently comprises three SUV models. One of those, the L6, was presented in Europe late on Monday during Milan Design Week.
Peter Matkin, Chery's Head of Engineering, said the company concentrated on sport-utility vehicles because they are "what everybody's asking for" in China and in markets where the company already exports cars. Matkin argued that the current product set leaves the group exposed in Europe.
"Now my constant push ... is that we're missing 50% of the European market because all of our cars are 4.2, 4.3 meters (and) above, and we need to now compete in the below 4 meters," he told media after the presentation.
Matkin said Chery has begun work on a new vehicle architecture specifically capable of supporting cars shorter than four metres. He stressed the program is active and progressing, but he did not provide specific timing for when such models would reach showrooms.
"We can't do everything at once, but I can promise you that it will come very, very soon, very, very fast, I mean (we are) daily on this program," he said, adding however he did not know the precise timing. "We just started working on this now".
On the manufacturing side, Chery already assembles cars in Europe through a joint venture that operates in a former Nissan plant in Spain. The company said it is seeking to broaden production in the region by forming partnerships with other automakers, arrangements that would allow Chery to take advantage of existing factory capacity.
While Chery's current European line-up remains weighted toward vehicles in the 4.2 to 4.3 metre range and above, the company's push to develop a compact architecture signals a strategic effort to address a larger portion of the European passenger car market. The firm has, however, so far disclosed neither a concrete development timeline nor target launch windows for sub-4 metre models.