Chery's 100,000-vehicle goal matches the 2030 robotaxi target of Geely's CaoCao Mobility, and both carmakers have lined up the same Abu Dhabi partner, K2.
Chery has set a goal of putting 100,000 robotaxis into operation worldwide by 2030, a target announced at its 2026 Global Innovation Conference in Wuhu on October 20, according to the Yangtse Evening Post and a China Securities Journal report carried by the 21st Century Business Herald. The vehicle is what Chery calls a native robotaxi, designed from the start for driverless Level 4 operation.
The target was part of a broader attempt to recast the Hong Kong-listed carmaker as an AI company. Chairman Yin Tongyue told the conference that Chery had invested more than RMB110 billion in research and development over the past five years, IT Home reported from the event. He described Chery as an AI technology company wearing a carmaker’s vest, and said the businesses that will be eliminated are those that refuse to embrace AI or to rebuild their industries with it.
Chery did not say how it would finance a fleet of that size or how many robotaxis it operates today. Its English-language press release on the conference did not mention the 100,000 figure.
CheryMind and the Ziwei chips are meant to run the fleet
Alongside the robotaxi, Chery introduced CheryMind, which it describes as a foundation model for physical AI, meaning AI that controls cars, robots and other machines. According to the China Securities Journal, the model draws on 700 terabytes of enterprise knowledge and 200 petabytes of engineering data, and is connected to more than 400 internal systems. The Yangtse Evening Post added that its training data includes 25 million driving clips and 5 million robot motion-capture clips.
The model is paired with Chery’s own Ziwei chip family. The Ziwei C100, planned for 2027, is rated at 1,200 trillion operations per second per chip, or 2,400 TOPS in a two-chip vehicle setup, and is aimed at running models with hundreds of billions of parameters inside the car, the China Securities Journal reported.
The robotaxi uses a six-layer safety framework covering perception, algorithms, execution, passengers, behavior and fleet management. ChinaEVHome, an industry site, reported that Chery plans different routes by region, including moving straight to full-stack robotaxi operations in Europe and starting in the Middle East with vehicle platforms before expanding commercial service. No other outlet carried that breakdown.
Chery’s export volume is the base for an overseas robotaxi push
Chery’s overseas sales give the plan a starting point. Chery sold 2.207 million vehicles in the first nine months of 2026, of which 1.551 million were exported, Yin told the conference. Of those exports, 529,000 were new-energy vehicles, according to the China Securities Journal. Chery’s conference release said its driver-assistance systems are certified under UN/ECE rules and designed for regulations in more than 130 countries and regions.
The Middle East is the first test. In an October 17 release, Chery said it planned to sign a strategic agreement with UAE-based K2 during its Wuhu user summit as an initial step toward international commercial deployment, a plan EastFrontier covered when Chery set out its UAE robotaxi agreement with K2. No public report has yet confirmed the signing.
K2, an AI company owned by the Abu Dhabi government, already works with a domestic rival. In June, Geely’s CaoCao Mobility signed a strategic cooperation agreement with K2 to test and deploy robotaxis in Abu Dhabi, Sina Tech reported, and CaoCao has set its own target of 100,000 robotaxis and 100,000 robotic vans by 2030.
Humanoid robots and fast charging round out the AI pitch
The conference also featured Mobo, a home-companion humanoid robot from Chery’s AiMOGA robotics unit, with pre-orders opening on October 21. The Yangtse Evening Post said AiMOGA products have been exported in more than 2,000 units to 60 countries, while Chery’s own release put commercial deliveries above 3,000. Chery also showed a 1.44-megawatt fast-charging system that it says adds 500 kilometers of range in five minutes, and two eVTOL aircraft.
Chery listed in Hong Kong in September 2025. The next markers for its robotaxi plan are a confirmed agreement with K2, a first commercial deployment outside China and fleet numbers that show how far Chery is from 100,000 vehicles.