The Shanghai motor show is disorienting from several perspectives. Apart from the obvious travel-related challenges, grappling with the size and diversity of China’s new car market is a different scale altogether.
Walking around the vast halls of the Shanghai show ground, a visitor is confronted by a bewildering array of unknown car brands and names – Wey, Jiangling, Haval, Iconiq Motors — are but a small sample.
About 10 years ago these local manufacturers were well below Western standards in terms of design and interior quality. But as I’d heard numerous times from industry sources, the standard of Chinese local manufacturers has risen exponentially.
A quick walkaround tour of the show revealed interiors with interesting grains, close stitching, neatly proportioned switchgear. There is still huge room for improvement, for example, hard interior plastics remain the rule rather than the exception and some engineering foul-ups are still in evidence.
But the significant point is that Chinese homegrown carmakers are catching up with the West at a rate of knots.
Recruitment of high-profile design talent like Geely’s Peter Horbury and Tomas Ingenlath, are well known, but European consultants like Pininfarina and Alfredo Stola are behind others.
There is still plenty of room in this huge market, however, for both domestic and import brands. New car sales in China topped 25 million last year and despite a momentary lull are expected to climb further.
Just over half those sales are sedans, with the balance of SUVs expected to grow.
Sales of large sedans are still dominated by the chauffeur market, to the degree that Volvo only sells a long-wheelbase S90 in China, which means it doesn’t need an ‘L’ badge that’s applied ubiquitously to rivals' LWB models.
“[Geely] chairman Li Shufu was adamant that we wouldn’t put an L on the trunk," said Volvo design chief Ingenlath.
But there’s a good reason why manufacturers like Geely, Haval and Jinbao had show stands festooned with small, medium and large SUVs – Chinese family drivers are flocking to 4x4s attracted by the practicality, suitability for pockmarked roads and styling/image.
They’re affordable, too, for China’s growing middle class with increasing disposable income. A C-segment Jianling SUV with crisp styling and attractive interior costs the equivalent of £16k (around Rs 16 lakh), at least £10k cheaper than a similar SUV in the UK.
The Jianling has a fake-leather wrapped dashboard, chrome-trimmed switchgear and door panels that combine at least four finishes, including fake carbon fibre.
Herbert Diess, VW boss, reckons that at least 30 new SUVs have been launched in the past 18 months to feed this frenzy.
Skoda is pushing hard in China, its biggest market, with plans to double sales to 600k units by 2020, boosted by new hybrid and battery electric models.
“The drive in China for EVs is stronger than in Europe, for a couple of reasons, and we are both pushing for cleaner air and lower emissions," says Bernhard Maier, Skoda’s boss.
China is touted as the world’s biggest market for electric cars, although apart from a handful of Tesla S models, they aren’t easy to spot on the roads of Shanghai.
There are still knock-off designs on sale in China, most notably Landwind’s outrageous photocopy of the Range Rover Evoque. But elsewhere there’s evidence of the uninhibited creativity that flows from confidence and optimism.
Julian Rendall
Autocar UK
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