Chery used the centre stage of its global innovation conference in Wuhu on October 21 not for a new car, a robotaxi or an eVTOL, but for a 90-centimetre-tall humanoid robot called MoBao, the first consumer product from its Moja Robotics subsidiary. Global reservations opened at the event, although pricing and delivery timelines were not disclosed, according to PCauto.
Chery chairman Yin Tongyue opened the conference not with sales figures or export rankings, but with a statement that framed the company's direction: "Chery is a high-tech innovation company wearing the guise of an automaker." He said Chery had built an enterprise brain and a vertical-domain large model called CheryMind, and that the core technologies behind its AI-powered cars would be reused in humanoid robots, robotaxis and eVTOL aircraft.
A robot designed for the living room, not the factory floor
MoBao stands 0.9 metres tall and weighs 17 to 18 kilograms, dimensions chosen deliberately so it can make eye contact with a seated elderly person and look a child in the eye when crouching. It has 22 degrees of freedom for walking and body expression, plus more than 30 dynamic facial expressions. The body uses soft materials with no sharp metal edges, and includes physical fusing and one-touch power-off for safety around children and older adults.
The robot's capabilities are deliberately narrow: it can alert family members within about one second if an elderly person falls, remind users to take medication, support remote video calls, patrol the home, accompany children in reading and spoken-English practice, and assist with homework. Battery life is 1.5 to 2 hours, and family images are stored locally with encryption. Chery did not position MoBao as a caregiver replacement, instead framing it as an emotional companion with safety reminders and light assistance.
Moja Robotics said the robot uses a spatial perception layer to understand its environment, an interaction layer for language and gestures, an execution layer for movement, and a decision-making layer for task planning and memory. The company's MoAgent embodied-intelligence system uses a dual-brain mechanism that combines long-term planning with real-time response, supports 16 parallel tasks, and can interrupt and resume tasks in under 0.2 seconds.
From dealerships to living rooms
Moja Robotics was founded by Chery in January 2025, initially to address multilingual reception needs at overseas 4S dealerships. The company says its Zhijing police robots are already on duty at intersections in Wuhu, Jiangyin and Changzhou, with over 1,000 units contracted and 100 delivered in batches. Its Moyin robots work in dealerships across more than 50 countries, and its robots also handle hospital reception, government service halls and museum guidance. Official figures put cumulative global deliveries at over 2,000 units across 60-plus countries and regions.
Chery sees strong technical overlap between cars and robots. Zhang Guibing, a Moja executive, has said about 70 percent of automotive and embodied-robot technology can be shared, covering perception, decision-making and planning chains, multimodal cabin interaction, and automotive-grade supply chains for lidar, motors and sensors. Chery's mass-manufacturing and overseas after-sales infrastructure gives it an advantage over pure AI startups, which can produce algorithm demos quickly but struggle to build heavy-asset capabilities such as stable production and spare-parts centres.
For Chery, MoBao is more than an additional product. It extends Moja's lineup from commercial and special-purpose robots to the home, and connects the car and home through a unified AI brain that links vehicle and robot systems. Internally, robots are defined as Chery's "third growth curve," after the price war squeezed automotive profit margins. During this year's World Robot Conference, Zhang told Reuters that Moja Robotics was in talks about potential listing venues and preparing for an IPO. Yin was more direct: "The future market space for the robot industry will be larger than the auto industry."
MoBao's reservation phase, with pricing and production timelines still undisclosed, reflects what Yin called Chery's approach: "greedy for technological innovation, timid about safety." The company is applying its automotive philosophy of validating before scaling to home robots, which face higher sensitivity around elderly falls, child supervision and family privacy.
