Here comes the Chinese... cars that is

I have been traveling into China since year 2000 and I have seen the evolution of the automotive industry in China. Without a doubt it has the fastest growing car market in the world. India and Brazil is coming in second and third. China now has more than 90 million cars on the road!! This was a massive jump from 10 million cars in 2001! China also has many new locally grown car manufacturers, some from truck assembly and others from other manufacturing backgrounds. The China made cars were initially totally ugly or simply bad copycats of other foreign car designs. Right now you can see brands like BYD which have copied designs from Toyota for their own cars.

China has since engage big names such as Giugiaro, Pininfarina and many other top design and automotive engineering companies to develop new cars for them. I personally believe that spending this money is justified as China still lacks the expertise to design desirable cars in the world stage. Their cars may sell well within China due to price advantage but selling their cars in foreign markets is growing slowly. Their initial hurdles when selling outside China has been the safety crash ratings of the China cars. Many early models failed miserably when they were put through the NCAAP safety crash tests. Most of them scored no stars or 1 star at best. However these China car companies invested heavily to improve their car's safety crash ratings to enable them to obtain reasonable safety crash ratings sufficient to sell their cars in foreign markets.
In the last 3 years, I have seen some decent looking China made cars on the streets of Shanghai. The driving experience is yet to be tested. From the technical specification printed in their brochures, I won't say that they would impress me but the China car companies are not here to impress. They are here to sell cars in bulk. Like any other Chinese business, it is all about profit and how much they can sell.

China car companies have the money to buy the necessary technology and also buy out dying European car companies. This basically helps them to take the technological spring board to jump from building poor quality cars with low technology to a level where they can compete with the Koreans or Japanese. I remember having a debate with my father who is an avid supporter of China's industrialization about the China automotive industry. I know that China cars are here to stay but I cannot say that they will have cutting edge technology just yet or even in the next 5 years. China car companies are not interested in investing in racing programs for research and development, and they don't have the racing pedigree to command a premium for their cars. They rather buy the technology from other people and save themselves all the trouble. There are however some China car companies who invested heavily in their own research and development to create niche cars such as BYD and their e6 model. This model is their first fully electric car that runs on batteries. I had the opportunity to ride in a BYD e6 taxi in Shenzhen and I was pleasantly impressed with the car. Quiet, smooth and reasonable built quality. I cannot say that the e6 is a great car but it is a decent effort from BYD and they have been one of the early birds to take the step to develop their own technology to compete with foreign brands in China and as well as foreign markets.

With the current global economic climate and shrinking disposable incomes, China cars will start to make a bigger impact on the global scene sooner than everyone expects.

I used to think that I would do my very best to avoid buying a China made car because I didn't have any confidence in their cars now, but with their ever strong will improve, I may have to rethink again.