On October 20, the 2026 Chery Global Innovation Conference, themed "Change," was held at the Chery Global Innovation Center in Wuhu, Anhui, with more than 3,000 guests attending from China and overseas. Chery used the event to unveil Yaoguang 2035, its strategy for the next decade, and to showcase 11 core technology clusters: the CheryMind vertical foundation model, in-house Ziwei chips, a natively factory-installed Robotaxi, the Lingxiao eVTOL, Xunlong instant charging and V2G, among others. The lineup lays out how the company intends to shift from traditional automaker to AI-driven global technology firm.

One Technology Foundation, Four Freedoms

"Chery is a high-tech innovation company wearing the vest of a carmaker." That was how Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery Automobile Co., Ltd., described the company in his keynote. He said Chery has spent more than 110 billion yuan on R&D and innovation over the past five years, and framed the strategy bluntly: "Turn the blade inward, use AI to re-engineer our own genes, change ourselves first, then change the world."

Where last year's conference focused on technology the company had in hand, this one emphasized the route forward. Yaoguang 2035 is built around "one technology foundation, four freedoms": an AI foundation supporting the independent evolution of four domains, mobility, energy, food and daily life.

Yin argued that AI has redefined how things get made and blurred the boundaries of the firm itself: "AI can replace skills, but it cannot replace humanity. What AI will really leave behind are the people who refuse it, who refuse to embrace it." Chery's AI-built cars, in his telling, are moving from stacking features to native evolution.

CheryMind: Trained on Real Industrial Data

The technology foundation announcements centered on a self-developed loop spanning computing power and models. Chery formally launched CheryMind, a vertical foundation model built for physical AI, trained on 700TB of corporate knowledge, 200PB of engineering data, tens of millions of R&D documents and 25 million clips of instructor-grade driving data.

According to Chery, the model is already embedded in daily operations, connected to more than 1,500 end-to-end business processes and over 400 corporate systems, with employees using it more than 60,000 times a day.

The accompanying Ziwei chip family spans three product lines: central computing, power and control. The C100 central computing chip, designed for on-device physical AI deployment, delivers 1,200 TOPS per chip and 2,400 TOPS of vehicle NPU computing power in a dual-chip configuration, supports 100B-class model deployment, and is slated for mass production in vehicles in 2027. The third-generation S1500, an automotive-grade 1500V silicon carbide chip, has a drain-source breakdown voltage of 1,500V and is mass-produced on 8-inch wafers; Chery says costs are down roughly 30% from its previous generation. The M series of automotive-grade control chips includes the MC200 domain controller and the MC100 for electric drive, among others.

Chery also introduced AWE, an "all-dimensional world engine" underpinning its intelligent driving stack, pairing one world model with three specialized models to cover scene construction, semantic understanding and behavioral decision-making end to end.

Mobility: 100,000 Robotaxis Targeted by 2030

On mobility, Chery unveiled a natively factory-installed Robotaxi built around five native attributes, architecture, factory installation, experience, operations and globalization, with a six-layer safety system covering perception, algorithms, actuation, passengers, behavior and fleet. The target is 100,000 vehicles in operation worldwide by 2030.

In low-altitude flight, the Lingxiao eVTOL family made its debut: the two-seat compound-wing Lingxiao Q212 cruises at 120 km/h with more than 60 minutes of endurance at full load, while the five-seat, fully tilting six-rotor Lingxiao J506 tops out at 350 km/h with a range of more than 1,000 kilometers.

Energy: 1.44MW Instant Charging and a V2G Network

Energy was the conference's other centerpiece. Chery launched its Xunlong instant charging technology, which supports 1,500A charging at 1.44MW of system power, adding 500 kilometers of range in five minutes with a cable and connector weighing under 2 kilograms. The company has begun a "100 stations across 10 cities" rollout, aiming for more than 20,000 Xunlong instant charging stations by the end of 2029.

On vehicle-to-grid, Chery Green Energy signed a cooperation agreement on October 16 with Mingsheng Group, a unit of State Grid, and the industry's first large-scale V2G operating station has gone live in Wuhu. Chery says vehicles can charge during off-peak hours and discharge at peak via AC V2G chargers, with users expected to earn more than 3,000 yuan a year once price spreads and subsidies are factored in. The company plans a world-first V2G rollout on the Fulwin A9 in the first half of 2027 and 20,000 V2G stations globally by 2029.

Also on display: 11kW wireless charging, a solid-state battery with 400Wh/kg energy density (pilot line scheduled to come online in 2027), and a solar-powered vehicle that generates 6 kWh of electricity and produces 5 liters of drinkable water per day.

Cockpit and Chassis: Eight Senses and 90-Degree Steering

On the user experience side, Chery introduced the Lingxi 8D smart cockpit. Built on the AIOS full-domain architecture, it links the chassis, cockpit, body, intelligent driving and powertrain domains for millisecond cross-domain response, and supports immersive experiences across eight dimensions, hearing, sight, smell, motion, touch, emotion, health and social, plus freely arranged "one-sentence Skills."

For the chassis, a four-in-one intelligent driving unit integrates EMB, a hub motor, independent four-wheel kingpin steering and active suspension into a single wheel, allowing up to 90 degrees of wheel steering angle, lateral driving and in-place turns, with triple redundancy across braking, steering and drive. A native 48V low-voltage electrical system delivers 15kW peak power to a fully redundant by-wire chassis, cutting 6 kilograms of copper and 8 to 12 kilograms of system weight per vehicle.

Taking the Technology into "Future City"

The conference also extended its showcase into daily life. Chery built "Future City," an immersive experience space with zones for smart transport, smart terminals, a smart recharging center and a technology exhibition hall, open to the public from October 19 to 24.

In robotics, Chery presented a matrix of robot agents spanning public services and personal care, including the global debut of Mobao, the first consumer-grade home companion humanoid from its Mojia brand. The Chery 2050 Future Academy was also inaugurated during the event.

What Chery Wants to Answer at 30

"Chery turns 30 next year. Apple launched the iPhone at 30; Toyota introduced the Corona at 29. Thirty can be the start of aging, or the eve of an innovation breakout," Yin said. "What Chery wants to do is make AI trustworthy, make people freer, and make the world better."

Judging by the signals from the conference, technological progress is not the point in itself. The question Chery is trying to answer is how AI can resolve real pain points in daily life, mobility, energy and food, which is precisely what the theme "Change" is getting at.