Luxeed nears its own carmaking license as September retail falls 44% to 5,160

Luxeed, the electric vehicle brand Chery Automobile (HKEX: 9973) builds with Huawei, is on track to become a carmaker in its own right. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has put Anhui Luxeed New Energy Vehicle Co. on its list of proposed new vehicle manufacturers in batch 412 of its road vehicle announcement, with production at No. 8 Wanjiang Avenue in the Wuhu Economic and Technological Development Zone and a note that it is a Chery Group member company. The public comment period runs from October 17 to October 23, 2026.

The license does not come with a new factory. In the same MIIT list, Chery Automobile applies to cancel No. 8 Wanjiang Avenue as one of its production addresses, the same site Luxeed would produce at. A Luxeed insider told Chinese media on October 17 that the company will hold its own production license once the comment period ends and approval is granted, and described the site as a Chery plant handed over to Luxeed. Until MIIT publishes the final batch, the listing remains a proposal.

The same insider also confirmed plans for a future standalone listing, without giving a venue or a timetable, and neither Chery nor Luxeed has announced one. Luxeed models currently wear a Chery Automobile tailgate badge, and new cars are expected to switch to a Luxeed badge once approval comes through, though the company has not confirmed that change.

NIO (NYSE: NIO) took a similar route. MIIT's batch 378 notice in December 2023 listed NIO's Anhui unit as a proposed new battery-electric passenger car maker, and NIO models in the same filing were badged NIO instead of JAC. By April 2024, new NIO cars reaching owners no longer carried JAC lettering. NIO had agreed to buy the production equipment and assets of the two JAC plants that built its cars, while Luxeed's site stays inside the Chery group.

The license lands as sales slide. Retail sales across Luxeed's four models came to 5,160 units in September, down 44.1% from 9,237 in August. August had only three models on the market, since the RX had not yet launched.

The V9 MPV carries most of that volume, 81.8% of Luxeed's September retail. Its September retail sales were 4,223, down from 8,312 in August. Shipments to dealers dropped further, to 3,542 from 8,283. The V9 went on sale on May 15, 2026, priced from 389,800 to 519,800 CNY (c. $57,989 to $77,328), and began deliveries on June 6. The MPV is 5,359 mm long on a 3,250 mm wheelbase, and its second-row seats can turn 180 degrees for face-to-face seating.

The V9's second-row seats can turn 180 degrees for face-to-face seating (HIMA)

The two older models are far smaller. R7 retail fell to 467 from 801, even as its wholesale rose to 465 from 231 in the month a refreshed R7 went on sale from 239,800 CNY (c. $35,674). The S7, Luxeed's first model, sold 91 at retail, down from 124.

The RX coupe SUV, 5,020 mm long on a 3,000 mm wheelbase, launched on September 28 in six trims priced from 259,800 to 389,800 CNY (c. $38,649 to $57,989). It logged 947 wholesale units and 379 at retail in September. That volume came before the formal start of owner deliveries: test-drive cars began reaching 389 stores on launch day, and Luxeed has scheduled its first owner delivery ceremony for October 25.

The Luxeed RX coupe SUV went on sale on September 28 (HIMA)

Chery's own filing, which counts company sales rather than retail, points the same way. Chery reported Luxeed sales of 5,008 in September, down from 8,561 in August and 36.5% lower than a year earlier. Luxeed's January to September total of 43,623 was down 24.5%, and the brand made up 1.8% of the 276,949 vehicles Chery's five main brands sold in September. HIMA, the Huawei-led alliance that includes Luxeed, delivered 37,490 vehicles across its brands that month.

The license is the latest step in separating Luxeed from Chery's own operations. Chery turned Luxeed into an independent business unit with separate accounting in 2024 and set up Anhui Luxeed New Energy Vehicle Co. in Wuhu on January 23, 2025, with registered capital of 1 billion CNY (c. $148.8 million) and Chery as sole shareholder. On August 7, 2025, Chery and Huawei signed the Luxeed Strategy 2.0 agreement, pledging more than 10 billion CNY (c. $1.49 billion) for research and development and an R&D team of 5,000 people.

The leadership has changed this year. Zhao Changjiang, formerly general manager of the Denza sales division at BYD (HKEX: 1211), joined in January 2026 as executive director and executive vice president. Guo Rui, a former Greater China chief marketing officer at Huawei's consumer business and later Honor's group chief marketing officer, was named chairman and CEO on April 2, 2026, and Yu Jiufeng stepped down as chairman. At the end of June, Chery's stake fell to 85%, with two Wuhu investment partnerships tied to Guo, Zhao and Chery executive Zhu Xiaodong holding 7.5% each, according to business registration records.

Luxeed is not the only group brand in batch 412. Voyah, the premium EV brand of Dongfeng, listed in Hong Kong on March 19, 2026, appears on the same MIIT list as a Dongfeng Group member company, with production addresses that include No. 8 Yunfeng Avenue in the Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone. Dongfeng Motor Co. is applying to cancel a No. 8 Yunfeng Avenue production address in the same zone. Of the 16 companies on the proposed list of new automobile manufacturers, Luxeed and Voyah are the only two flagged as members of existing groups; the other 14 are noted as new special-purpose vehicle makers.

Chery chairman Yin Tongyue called Luxeed the Chery group's highest-level strategic initiative at the V9 launch in May. With one MPV making up more than four in five of the brand's retail sales and the RX yet to begin formal owner deliveries, the open question is whether a license of its own changes how many cars Luxeed sells, or mainly whose name is expected to appear on the tailgate.

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