Omoda and Jaecoo go off-road

A tour of the factory and off-road driving

- By NEIL PAGULAYAN

Omoda and Jaecoo are just two members of a very large and multi-talented automotive family. To give Filipinos a better idea of where these two siblings come from, Omoda and Jaecoo Philippines recently invited us to Wuhu, China to learn more about them.

Omoda and Jaecoo's parent company is Chery and its headquarters are in Wuhu. The brands under Chery are of course, Chery, Exceed, iCaur, Lepas, Jetour and Omoda and Jaecoo.

Factory tour

Our first stop was Chery's sprawling manufacturing facility, at the time undergoing upgrades for higher efficiency and better operating cost. Built at the cost of USD 550-million, this 830,000 square meter facility is estimated to produce an output value of USD 12-billion after the planned upgrades. As of this writing, the production line is capable of an annual capacity of 300,000 completely built units (CBU) and 200,000 completely knocked down (CKD) units.

We had a chance to take a quick look in the Welding Workshop. Ninety-seven percent of the work done on this 50,000 square meter floor is automated, with 660 robots and 270 workstations. The tasks of performing movement of panels, application of adhesive and welding of the different sub-assemblies are fully automated, the only human intervention is supervision. It has the capability of assembling stamped panels into a vehicle body in about two hours.