Over 150 brands, more than 30,000,000 new cars sold each year, and a focus on fast development proves China means business.
The People’s Republic is an industrial behemoth – a rolling stone that has no intention of slowing down. They build cities that house more people than the population of Australia in an area half the size of Greater Sydney. They can slap up roads and towers and tunnels in the time it takes our government to approve pre-planning for a roundabout.
So it should come as no surprise that their car industry is easily the most powerful on the planet, with more annual sales than Europe and the USA combined.
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I was oblivious to any of this as I enjoyed some Easter chocolate. Little did I know how wide my eyes were about to open.
Easter Monday, Paul and I boarded a flight to Shanghai as guests of GWM Australia. The plan was to spend two days at the motor show, film a few videos and undertake the first ever CarExpert live cross, beaming into Sunrise live from Shanghai.
The first thing we noticed was the variation in cars.
GWM, BYD, Haval, Zeekr, Chery – they were just the ones we recognised. There were dozens of cars we were googling on the drive from the airport to the hotel. Surprisingly, the German marques were few and far between. In fact, I think I saw more Cadillacs and Buicks than I did Mercedes.
But arriving at the motor show was what really blew us away. I’ve been to SEMA in Las Vegas, which is probably the biggest auto show I’ve seen.
This put SEMA to shame. Designed to look like a four-leaf clover from above, the National Exhibition and Convention Centre Shanghai features 13 giant halls, each around 30,000 square meters – that’s about three rugby fields each. And the motor show filled nine of them.
There were brands you’ve never heard of, brands you will hear about soon, and brands that are well established around the world.
GWM was a big player at the show, taking up half a hall just with their displays, covering everything from the little Ora Good Cat right up to the massive Tank 700 – and a twin-turbo V8 drivetrain.
BYD also had a massive stand, along with the likes of Nio (the electric vehicle brand and battery-swapping company) and Chery. All of which dominated the halls they were in with their various sub-brands.
And the cars. Everything you can think of was there. Tiny econo-boxes, EV off-roaders, even “flying cars” – I say it like that because they are really just glorified drones with wheels on them.
Here in Australia, many like to think that Chinese cars are crude and rushed, slapped together in a shack by people who don’t know what they’re doing. I’m here to tell you, you couldn’t be further from the truth.
Yes, China’s development cycle is accelerated compared to legacy automakers and yes, they keep throwing new models out there.
But they aren’t messing about. They have filled their ranks with personnel from some of the largest and most trusted brands around the world. They’ve sent their engineers to some of the best schools in the world and they are putting huge amounts of energy into market research to ensure the vehicles they produce live up to the expectations of customers.
Trust me, if you want to do anything in China it takes 27 phone calls and a long list of people to sign off on it. These cars aren’t just getting slapped together willy-nilly. They are meticulously planned and built to a standard – even if that standard is different to what the good folks at Holden had.
China is in the middle of playing catch-up with legacy brands that have over 100 years of expertise behind them. They have done all this in the past 30 years, and now they make SUVs that produce 900Nm of torque and are as luxurious as a premium Euro-brand for a fraction of the price.
China is coming, I’ll probably buy one of their cars in the very near future – the iCar pickup is very tempting to park next to my future Ford Ranger Super Duty.
If you want to hate on them, or throw shade or just make loud exclamations with no real backup to your logic then please, go right ahead. That only emboldens them to push harder.
If you don’t want to buy a Chinese-built car, there’s nothing wrong with that. But what they are doing is providing vehicles that lower the barrier to entry for new car buyers. That can only be a good thing.
So, I guess in that sense, China has won.
