Live from the mega trade fair
Auto China: low-cost paradise or monster wave?
"Slow is the new fast" is the credo celebrated by the Chinese export world champion Chery, which is coming to Austria this year. But this has nothing to do with elegant restraint: China's car industry (flanked by BMW, Mercedes and the VW Group) is currently gathering in Beijing at what is suddenly the most important motor show in the world and it has something of the calm before the big storm. But it is anything but calm here. And slow is another matter.
The eight exhibition halls are virtually overflowing with new cars - especially large ones - and what feels like millions of people pushing their way across the stands, which are used to the last square centimeter. The opposite of the bleak picture that car fairs now present to us, we remember Geneva two months ago with a shudder.
Countless car brands that we have never heard of and that we can't even read. There are currently said to be around 150 in China and more are being added all the time. However, many will have disappeared again as soon as we have run the characters through the Google translator. But most of the appearances here are serious and frightening from a European perspective, the pace of development is immense, thanks to almost unlimited cheap manpower. And money from the state.
What now? Fast or slow? This is obviously just as difficult for Europeans to understand as the hordes of influencers in schoolgirl looks, the extremely slim women with white make-up who stream live chats about the products, and others who always pose in front of cameras in short skirts and dresses. It looks as if they have sorted out normal and overweight people in China. Older people too.
In our country, developments take longer, yet - driven by market and management pressure - they are sometimes rushed and cars are sent to the market unfinished (as was the case with the VW ID.3 and Golf 8, for example). It then takes years to eradicate errors (such as the unlit touch sliders or the software at VW, to keep things small). That's why people retire at some point and roads don't sweep. The bright world in China also has a downside.
But this remains hidden from most people. The winners are seen. And the cheap cars. VW has lost its market leadership to BYD, the ID.7 has failed miserably, now they want to build more "in China for China" and have invested 2.5 billion euros in their new partner Xpeng (pronounced Schaupong). The major German companies are currently struggling in unison with miserably underutilized factories.
In the world's most important market, the locals are setting the pace, and not just because suddenly everything is supposed to be electric.
Record diesel comes from China
Did someone say that the Chinese can only do electric, nobody can fool us when it comes to combustion engines? Electrification is of course promoting the automotive upswing in China's industry, but recently the diesel crown has also been placed on a Chinese head: the company Weichai Power has designed a diesel engine with an efficiency of 53.09 percent - a quantum leap compared to the usual 42 percent.
At the other end of the automotive drive technology spectrum, CATL presented an LFP battery at Auto China that is said to offer a range of 1000 kilometers, 600 of which can be recharged in just ten minutes in the best case scenario.
Combustion engines remain relevant in China too, albeit less and less without an additional plug due to strict registration restrictions: every second electrified car registered in China is currently a plug-in hybrid. Those with a range of more than 100 km are booming. Europeans cannot keep up, especially not in terms of unit numbers.
Brave new world?
Unlike in the past, there are hardly any copies of well-known brands at the trade fair; instead, there are plenty of vehicles with pleasing and sometimes even sensational designs. From the Grand Tourer from Denza to Robocar, the Ferrari Monza SP2 copy from BYD subsidiary Fangchengbao or the bullet from MG and, yes, the Xiaomi SU7, the first car from a cell phone manufacturer, which not only makes a good impression even on closer inspection, but is already sold out well into the fall with 75,000 firm orders (manufacturer BAIC has no problem with a lack of capacity).
There are also cars with the name iCar, but these are not made by Apple, but are off-roaders from Chery.
What really stands out is that small cars are rare. You won't find much more than the Nammi EV1 or the BYD Seagull. This is consistent with the street scene in Beijing.
There is also a clear trend in a direction that has been almost completely abandoned in the West: There are plenty of vans here, many of them luxurious, all of them spacious. Will Renault ever regret having wasted the Espace name on an SUV?
Of course there are bizarre things to see at the trade fair, such as the Hongqi limousine, which could have come straight out of a Batman comic, Dongfeng's answer to Tesla's Cybertruck or the Xpeng flying car. But most of it is in tune with the times, and that seems to be going against the established brands.
It's all just the beginning
We don't know when the great flood from China will reach us, but we do know that it will be powerful. It's similar to Auto China, where it's hard to get information because the stand crews aren't geared up to give Western visitors information in English. What's the point? So much remains unclear, and yet it is still considered a distinction for Chinese companies to have "made it" in Europe.
This is exactly what Chery, the number three in China and the country's largest car exporter, intends to do. The Wuhu-based group has founded two new brands specifically for this purpose: Omoda and Jaecoo. And this was only a year ago. They are now represented in 40 countries, 160,000 cars have already been sold and the cars roll off the production line in a former Nissan plant in Barcelona. You can guess what's in store for us. BYD and MG formed the vanguard in Austria, Omoda and Jaecoo want to launch in late summer. And this is just the beginning. Let's hope the cheap bites don't get stuck in our throats.
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