The fifth time is the charm. Chery has become the first Chinese manufacturer to set foot in Europe with Ebro in Barcelona, ??on the land of the former Nissan in the Free Trade Zone. But it is not the first time that Chery has tried it. Its long march towards Catalonia began 14 years ago, in 2010, when the then president of the Generalitat, José Montilla, traveled to China and announced that this company would settle here and create up to 11,000 jobs. The project did not work, although there were no explanations. A year later, Artur Mas held the presidency of the Government and announced the arrival of another Chinese car manufacturer, Brilliance, a project that also did not go ahead. President Carles Puigdemont took over years later and advanced a large investment from Thunder Power, based in Hong Kong and already specialized in electric cars, which also did not materialize. And the bet on Great Wall Motors, finally, also failed in 2021. It was an especially painful failure because this time it was already about compensating for a historic loss such as the closure of the Japanese company Nissan.
Chery is now completing the reindustrialization project on Nissan’s land, where the Chinese group will produce, together with the Spanish company Ebro-EV Motors, mainly electric cars, but also gasoline cars. Forecasts point to 150,000 vehicles in 2029, although production will begin at the end of this year and should scale to 50,000 in 2027.
Known for its cheap electric models, Chery is the second Chinese brand to announce its implementation in the EU after BYD, which last February made official the construction of its first European factory in Hungary, although it will not be operational for three years. Both announcements come in a context of trade tensions between Beijing and Brussels, which last September opened an investigation into the Chinese Government’s public subsidies to electric car manufacturers. For the European Commission, these subsidies allow Chinese groups to apply artificially low prices. Opening factories in EU territory would allow these groups to avoid the tariffs that Brussels could end up applying to the import of vehicles from China.
The electric car sector has developed rapidly in China in recent years, with local brands such as BYD, MG, Zeeker, Nio, XPeng and Great Wall Motors, which stand up to a giant like the North American Tesla. Chery is a lesser-known brand, although it claims to have sold 1.88 million cars in 2023 and to be the main Chinese exporter of vehicles (937,000 last year). The company’s executive vice president, Zhang Guibing, assured last Friday during the signing of the alliance with Ebro that they want to turn Spain into one of their “main export bases.”
The market share in Europe for cars made in China is growing strongly. Last year, 19.5% of battery-powered vehicles sold in the EU had been manufactured in the Asian giant. A figure that this year will rise to 25.3%, according to a study carried out by the European Federation of Transport and Environment (Transport
