The chairmen of the Chinese automakers Xiaomi and Chery on Wednesday said they eye faster expansion overseas, despite tariff uncertainties and geopolitical risks.

The comments came as the entrepreneurs, both also deputies to the National People's Congress (NPC), geared up to attend the annual Two Sessions meetings in Beijing.

In an interview with RTHK in the capital, Lei Jun, founder, chairman, and chief executive of the tech-to-auto firm Xiaomi, said he supports the country's ambition in pursing greater tech self-sufficiency.

"Regarding the 15th Five-Year Plan, I believe our country attaches great importance to scientific and technological innovation, as well as self-reliance in science and technology, such as in the fields of artificial intelligence, robotics and chips.

"I particularly support this," he said.

"And I think our Xiaomi vehicles must expand at a faster pace in the overseas market, globally.

"I also hope we can have the opportunity for Xiaomi vehicles to enter the Hong Kong market soon," he added.

The 56-year-old high-profile billionaire, who actively uses social media to promote his products, added that the company aims to deliver 550,000 electric vehicles in 2026, an increase of over 30 percent year on year.

In one of its latest moves, the company also laid out plans to deploy "a large number" of self-developed humanoid robots in its factories in the coming two years, after conducting tests for car production.

Lei earlier said in a social media post that the test robots have operated autonomously for three continuous hours, successfully completing assembly tasks without human intervention.

Echoing Lei's ambitions, Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery Automobile, said the carmaker would expand its production overseas, despite the impact of tariff tensions.

"Tariffs have impacted us greatly, but we have to think of ways to overcome those challenges, such as by boosting the production capacity in the overseas region," he told RTHK.

"In the past, we exported the whole completed vehicles overseas, but now we can export the parts of the vehicles, and produce vehicles in those regions, locally," he said.

Yin added that he is confident the Anhui-headquartered, state-owned automaker can maintain its scale of exporting about 1.6 million vehicles this year, while selling 3.2 million vehicles domestically.

"There's always demand so we have to offer better products, better services and higher quality," he said, as he shrugged off concerns over price wars among automakers, pointing to improving efficiency.

"Now, we are fully engaged in the transformation of our vehicles towards electric and intelligent technologies," he added.



Edited by Thomas McAlinden