Tag Archives: Chery

NEW CARS

Chery Fulwin T9L Previews a Big, Tech-Heavy Swing at the Mid-Size SUV Class

Chery has opened blind pre-orders for the Fulwin T9L, a new mid-size SUV that’s set to officially debut shortly after China’s Spring Festival—and it reads like a checklist of everything modern buyers say they want, plus a few things they didn’t know to ask for.

The T9L introduces a new design language for Chery, one that leans clean and futuristic rather than aggressive. Up front, a semi-enclosed grille flows into slim headlamps, while the lower bumper stacks its vents in tidy layers. The proportions are substantial: at 191.7 inches long with a 115.0-inch wheelbase, the Fulwin T9L lands squarely in the heart of the mid-size SUV segment, promising real interior space rather than brochure optimism.

From the side, semi-hidden door handles and frameless mirrors add a premium gloss, while the rear goes all-in on theatrics with a full-width taillight bar featuring wraparound elements and a dot-matrix signature. It’s modern without trying too hard, which may be the most impressive trick of all.

Inside, Chery clearly wants to play in a higher league. A full LCD instrument panel sits behind a two-spoke steering wheel, but your eyes will inevitably drift to the massive 17.3-inch 2.5K central display dominating the dash. The center console keeps things practical with wireless charging, dual cupholders, and a clean, horizontal layout.

Seating is where the Fulwin T9L really flexes. Up front, both driver and passenger get zero-gravity seats with 16-way power adjustment, ventilation, heating, massage, memory functions, lumbar support, and even leg rests. The second row isn’t treated like an afterthought either, offering electric recline up to 35 degrees, heating, ventilation, and more than 40 inches of legroom. Both rows can be folded into a “dual large bed mode,” which sounds like something invented by a marketing team—but could turn out to be a road-trip party trick owners actually use.

Tech overload continues with independent dual video and audio output for front and rear passengers, a 23-speaker Boyar Sound audio system pushing a claimed 1080 watts, and even an in-car refrigerator capable of heating or cooling between 6 and 50 degrees Celsius. Ambient lighting, vertical treble speakers, and a 3nm cockpit chip underpin the experience, allowing deep personalization for different drivers.

On the driver-assistance front, the Fulwin T9L comes armed with Chery’s Eagle 700+ system. A roof-mounted LiDAR unit, 27 sensors, and a Horizon Journey 6P chip delivering 560 TOPS of computing power enable both highway and city Navigation On Assist. The system promises automated lane changes, ramp navigation, traffic light recognition, intersection turns, and pedestrian avoidance—features that are rapidly becoming table stakes in China’s tech-forward SUV market.

Power comes from Chery’s Kunpeng Super Hybrid CDM system, now in its 6.0 iteration. A 1.5-liter turbocharged engine with a claimed thermal efficiency of nearly 46 percent pairs with a dedicated hybrid transmission to deliver a combined 349 horsepower. Opt for the all-wheel-drive version, and Chery says the T9L will sprint to 100 km/h in under five seconds, on its way to a 240 km/h top speed. Efficiency claims are just as ambitious, with fuel consumption as low as 3.9 L/100 km and a CLTC-rated electric-only range of up to 230 kilometers.

Chery hasn’t released pricing yet, but the Fulwin T9L’s spec sheet reads less like a cautious step forward and more like a challenge thrown squarely at established players. If the production version delivers on even most of these promises, Chery’s latest SUV could be less about following trends—and more about daring competitors to keep up.

Source: Chery

News

China Goes to Le Mans—and It’s About Time

For more than a century, the 24 Hours of Le Mans has been motorsport’s ultimate proving ground: a rolling laboratory where reputations are built, shattered, and occasionally resurrected at 200 mph. Porsche has made it a religion. Ferrari treats it like sacred art. Audi weaponized it. Toyota conquered it through sheer persistence. And yet, through more than 100 editions of the race, one massive corner of the global auto industry has remained conspicuously absent.

Until now.

Chery has signed a five-year agreement with the ACO to compete at Le Mans under its premium Exeed brand, marking the first time a Chinese manufacturer will take on the world’s most famous endurance race. It’s a milestone not just for Chery, but for China’s entire automotive industry—and a signal that the country’s ambitions now extend far beyond showrooms and sales charts.

Because if you want to be taken seriously as a carmaker, there’s no better place to earn your scars than motorsport. And there’s no harsher judge than Le Mans.

Motorsport: The Last Unclaimed Territory

Chinese manufacturers have spent the last two decades mastering volume, electrification, and global expansion. What they’ve largely avoided is racing—the messy, expensive, ego-bruising business of pushing machines past the edge in public. Motorsport has always been more than spectacle; it’s a marketing platform, a technical incubator, and a cultural statement rolled into one. And until now, China has sat that one out.

That’s why Exeed’s Le Mans entry matters. In a race that has hosted everyone from Jaguar and Bentley to Cadillac and Lamborghini, the absence of a Chinese badge has been glaring. Le Mans is where brands prove not just speed, but durability, engineering discipline, and institutional confidence. Showing up means you believe your engineers belong in the same conversation as the world’s best.

Chery clearly believes that now.

The Big Question: What’s Under the Bodywork?

Le Mans isn’t kind to newcomers, and it’s especially unforgiving to half-baked powertrains. Exeed’s current road-car lineup—SUVs and sedans with no GT sports cars in sight—offers little hint of what kind of race car will emerge. What we do know is that an entirely new machine will have to be developed, complete with an internal combustion engine capable of surviving 24 hours of flat-out abuse.

That’s where things get interesting.

Chery, like most Chinese manufacturers, has limited experience beyond four-cylinder engines. Six- and eight-cylinder powerplants are rare exceptions in China’s domestic market, making a Le Mans effort feel almost absurd on paper. Hybridization seems likely—both as a nod to modern endurance racing and a way to leverage China’s strength in electrification—but even that doesn’t solve the core issue: someone still has to build a serious combustion engine.

The smart money says Chery won’t do it alone. Outsourcing the engine to a specialized engineering firm would shortcut years of development pain and reduce the inevitable “childhood illnesses” that plague first-time race programs. It wouldn’t be unprecedented either—plenty of manufacturers have leaned on external expertise before claiming victories as their own.

Impossible Missions Have Precedent

If this all sounds unrealistic, history says otherwise. In the 1960s, Ford’s decision to take on Ferrari at Le Mans seemed laughable. Detroit muscle versus Italian racing aristocracy? We know how that turned out.

Exeed’s challenge may be even steeper. This isn’t just a new team—it’s a new motorsport culture learning endurance racing from scratch. But that’s exactly why the project feels significant. Le Mans has never been about comfort zones. It rewards obsession, resources, and the willingness to fail publicly until you don’t.

And Chery has resources in abundance.

Money, Scale, and a Replica of La Sarthe

Chery sold more than 2.5 million vehicles last year and remains China’s largest auto exporter. This isn’t a vanity startup throwing a logo on a race car—it’s a global manufacturing giant with the financial muscle to play the long game. That matters, because Le Mans success isn’t bought with a single check; it’s earned through years of testing, iteration, and heartbreak.

To underline its seriousness, the ACO agreement reportedly includes French consultants helping Chery build a Le Mans–style test track in Wuhu, where the company is headquartered. A replica of Circuit de la Sarthe on Chinese soil isn’t just symbolic—it’s a declaration of intent. Engineers and drivers training 365 days a year on a homegrown endurance circuit? That’s how racing programs mature.

More Than a Race Entry

Exeed’s Le Mans debut isn’t about trophies—at least not yet. It’s about credibility. About proving that Chinese manufacturers aren’t just fast learners in electrification and manufacturing scale, but capable of mastering the most unforgiving discipline in motorsport.

Le Mans doesn’t care how many cars you sell. It doesn’t care about market share or export numbers. It cares whether your machine can survive the night, the rain, and the relentless punishment of 5,000 kilometers at full tilt.

For the first time, China is ready to find out.

And whether Exeed finishes first or last, just showing up changes the conversation forever.

Source: Chery

News

Chery Tried to Recreate Range Rover’s Legendary Heaven’s Gate Stunt – It Didn’t Go Well

Back in 2018, Range Rover pulled off one of the greatest pieces of automotive marketing ever recorded: a Range Rover Sport, piloted by a Le Mans–winning driver, conquering the 999 steps up to China’s Heaven’s Gate. The video—now sitting at 6.7 million views—was equal parts engineering flex and cinematic bravado, cementing itself as one of the brand’s most iconic “because we can” moments.

Naturally, someone was going to try it again.

Enter Chery, China’s fast-rising automaker, with a brand-new SUV called the Fulwin X3L—a hybrid off-roader whose design pays significant homage to the latest Land Rover and Range Rover silhouettes. In its top configuration, the X3L makes an impressive 422 horsepower, which Chery evidently felt was enough to warrant a headline-snatching spectacle of its own.

So the company brought a bright yellow example to the foot of Heaven’s Gate, lined it up with the ancient staircase, and hit record.

Spoiler: It didn’t reach the gate. Or even close.

Ground-level footage shows the Fulwin X3L powering up the steps with enthusiasm—until about the midway point, where enthusiasm turns into hesitation. The SUV begins to bog down. The driver digs deeper into the throttle, trying to claw toward the next landing. Instead, the X3L loses traction, slides backward, and violently impacts a stone barrier.

A shower of debris follows, some of it tumbling off the cliffside. The SUV, thankfully, stays put. The dignity? Less so.

Chery’s Explanation: Blame the Rope

Within hours, Chery issued a polished apology. The company explained that the November 12 test was “interrupted due to an unexpected incident” that drew “widespread attention”—corporate-speak for this was supposed to go viral for different reasons.

According to the automaker, a safety rope meant to serve as an emergency safeguard detached, became tangled in one of the X3L’s wheels, and drained power—leading to the backward slide and crash.

It’s unclear why a stunt meant to showcase power and capability needed a safety rope in the first place, but we digress.

A Historic Staircase, Now Slightly More Historic

Heaven’s Gate isn’t just a scenic photo op—it’s home to a centuries-old stone staircase leading to the 1,700-year-old Tianmen Cave, a sacred and heavily protected cultural landmark. Which means Chery’s failed stunt didn’t just dent an SUV; it damaged heritage infrastructure that predates the internal combustion engine by more than a millennium.

So yes, Chery does indeed have more apologizing to do.

Chery’s Fulwin X3L is probably a perfectly competent hybrid SUV. But engineering credibility isn’t earned by recreating someone else’s viral stunt—especially if the result is a high-profile, slow-motion failure on an irreplaceable historic monument.

Range Rover wrote the playbook at Heaven’s Gate.
Chery tried to photocopy it.
Unfortunately, the machine jammed.

Source: hongkong.newsupdates via Instagram