Chery Automobile Co. Ltd., trading as Chery and sometimes known by the pinyin transcription of its Chinese name, Qirui (), is a Chinese state-owned automobile manufacturer headquartered in Wuhu, Anhui, China. Founded in 1997, it is currently the ninth largest automobile manufacturer in China, with 0.959 million sales in 2021. Chery's principal products are passenger cars, minivans, and SUVs; it sells passenger cars under the Chery marque and commercial vehicles under the Karry brand. Chery began the production of automobiles in 1999 and their export from China in 2001. It has been China's largest passenger car exporter since 2003, and in 2011 exported around 25% of its total production. It operates Qoros formed in 2007, a 50:50 joint venture with Kenon Holdings, for selling a range of premium vehicles in emerging markets. In 2012, Jaguar Land Rover formed a 50:50 joint venture with Chery dubbed Chery Jaguar Land Rover for the production of Jaguar and Land Rover cars in China. Chery has several vehicle assembly and component manufacturing facilities in mainland China, and its vehicles are assembled in around 15 other countries—primarily in factories not owned by the company that use either complete or semicomplete knock-down kits. It has two domestic R&D centers and invests around 7% of its total revenues in product development. History 1997 to 2010 Chery was founded in 1997 as a state-owned enterprise by a group of officials from Anhui province and began automobile production in 1999 using a chassis licensed from Volkswagen's SEAT Toledo. Called the Fengyun, Chery's first car sold nearly 30,000 units. The Wall Street Journal has described Chery's corporate culture as "an odd hybrid of Communist state enterprise and entrepreneurial start-up", and entrepreneurial risk-taking is evident in its early history. Initial production was technically illegal as the company was only awarded a passenger car production license in 2003, so while its first product rolled off the line in December 1999, it could not be legally sold until 2001. In that year, Chery solved the problem by piggybacking on a SAIC Motor license, which it did until 2003. Perhaps the 20% ownership stake in Chery that SAIC once held was compensation for this early favor, but the ownership was soon sold due to rising tensions between Chery and another SAIC partner, General Motors. GM is not the only foreign partner of SAIC to have been exasperated with Chery; Volkswagen claims Chery was using