Chery was recently named as part of China’s General Office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s (MIIT) “New-generation AI Innovation Key Task Undertaker List.” The state-owned carmaker was cited particularly for its “Communication System Applied in Aided Driving or Autonomous Driving Vehicles.”

Since December 2019, MIIT started to recruit innovators in the field of artificial intelligence for the purpose of breaking the bottleneck of development in the hopes of accelerating China’s AI industry and promoting innovation. Being selected as part of the list means Chery will play a significant role in its home country’s new-generation AI innovation.

As one of the earliest to deploy oprations in the area of intelligent driving in China, Chery teamed up with the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2010 to establish an autonomous driving vehicle technology platform. In 2018, to fully embrace this thrust, the carmaker established a strategic brand dedicated: Chery Lion.

Chery Lion includes five business sectors: Chery Lion Intelligent Driving, Chery Lion, Chery Lion Intelligent Win, Chery Lion Intelligent Manufacturing, and Chery Lion Intelligent Travel. This covers the full product lifecycle from R&D to manufacturing, marketing and service.


Chery has also worked with Baidu Apollo to launch an autonomous driving technology platform. In 2019, Chery kicked off public road tests in North America as the world’s 65th holder of California’s Autonomous Vehicle Driving Permit. On the basis of putting Level 2 autonomous driving vehicles into mass production, Chery is expected to achieve Level 3 conditional autonomous driving by 2020 and Level 4 highly autonomous driving by 2025.

The carmaker also concluded the “Cooperative Agreement on 5G Application in Autonomous Driving” with China Telecom in 2019. Under the agreement, Chery and China Telecom will jointly build a 5G Autonomous Driving Demonstration Park and vehicle laboratory, and jointly promote 5G application in the development, testing, and demonstrative operations of Chery’s autonomous driving technologies. To date 5G has been fully accessible in the 5G autonomous driving park.

Selecting Chery as part of MIIT’s “New-generation AI Innovation Key Task Undertaker List” shows the recognition of Chery’s AI achievements and the expectation for Chery’s future development. In the future, Chery will continue to push forward the development of intelligent vehicles, following China’s national AI strategy.