It wasn’t so long ago that their names were mocked – Great Wall, otherwise known as “Great Wall”, BYD for “Build Your Dreams” (“build your dreams”) or MG, once passed from the original Morris Garages ( and British) to “Modern Gentleman” – and their propensity to plagiarize the style of successful foreign models. Chinese brands no longer make people smile.
After a forced interruption of four years due to a health crisis, the 2022 edition of the Paris Motor Show which, for the public, will be held from October 18 to 23, coincides with the first major attempts made by these manufacturers with a view to gaining a foothold in the European market.
The Chinese automobile industry no longer makes any mystery of its planetary ambitions. For two years, it has already dominated the huge Chinese market (26 million registrations in 2021), the largest in the world and one of the only ones to have progressed this year. Foreign firms that prospered there through joint ventures are giving up market share to national brands. They intend to push their advantage by going to challenge the Europeans on their own ground. Southeast Asia, the preserve of the Japanese, is also in sight, before heading for the United States.
Ideal shooting window
Chinese manufacturers know it: the moment is ideal. The conversion of Europe to all-electric, undertaken reluctantly by the historical brands, looks like a godsend. By placing all players on an equal footing, electrification has made it possible to abolish the prohibitive technological inferiority imposed on them by the reign of the internal combustion engine. The global hierarchy of automotive brands, set in stone for decades, is wavering.
For ten years, Beijing has organized and supported this transition with the backing of quotas and subsidies, encouraging Great Wall Motors, Geely, BYD, SAIC (owner of MG, among others), Xpeng, FAW, Chang’an, Brilliance, Dongfeng or GAC to dig their furrow. Not all of them will survive, but the result is there: twice as many 100% electric models are sold in China as in the United States, Japan and Europe combined. And this battle order does not forget the infrastructure: in China, there is a public charging station for three electric or hybrid-rechargeable vehicles, while Europe is running behind the objective of one for eight.
Helped, among other things, by the experience accumulated thanks to the joint ventures created with foreign brands, the Chinese groups have acquired a technological expertise that no one dreams of contesting. Added to this is the ability to bring production costs down by exploiting the economies of scale allowed by the size of their domestic market. “To generalize the electric car, it is to roll out the double thickness red carpet under the wheels of the brands coming from Beijing, Shanghai or Wuhan”, plague a representative of the Stellantis group, owner of the Peugeot, Fiat, Chrysler and Citroën brands.
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