They are cheaper than the competition, but not exactly cheap, have a very good technological level, and have reasonably unrealistic business goals. Even if their style, often quite massive, is not breathtaking, Chinese cars are no longer the exotic models of mediocre quality which had vainly tried their luck in Europe in the mid-2000s. offered a legitimacy on which four manufacturers intend to capitalize well, by developing very varied strategies.
Fetish brand of the SAIC (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation) consortium, MG was the first to weave its web. The British badge, bought in 2006, gives it a certain visibility, but its catalog no longer has anything to do with the small convertibles of the 1960s that we saw in the films of the New Wave. Released for a year, the ZS is an SUV with very consensual lines and a somewhat rough finish, but which offers for 23,000 euros (ecological bonus deducted) a range of just over 200 kilometers, sufficient to ensure travel urban. MG also launched the EHS, the cheapest plug-in hybrid on the market (33,700 euros) which will be followed in June by the Marvel R, an electric vehicle more sophisticated than the ZS.
Thanks to a distribution network of 75 points of sale (the goal is to have 130 by 2022), the brand has already sold 804 vehicles in France, according to data provided by AAA Data, and expects a total of 5,000 by 2021. “We want to reach 1% of the market in 2022”, that is to say nearly 20,000 registrations, assures Julien Robert, sales director of MG France. The objective would suppose to practically raise the sales to the level of Mini or DS. “The Koreans broke through twice as fast as the Japanese in Europe. The Chinese will go even faster ”, do we believe in MG.
Seres, a manufacturer from the Dongfeng group (one of the shareholders of PSA, now part of the Stellantis group), has also chosen to deploy a traditional distribution network. It has 5 points of sale, but intends to create 80 in the long term. While no registration of the Seres 3 – a fairly versatile electric SUV – has not yet been identified, the firm unashamedly evokes a target of 1,500 sales by the end of 2021 and 4,000 in 2022. In order to to come out of anonymity, she invokes the patronage of Martin Eberhard, founder and first boss of Tesla, in an attempt to present herself as “ an American-Chinese brand », And suggests another point in common with the Tesla, by highlighting its cobalt-free batteries.
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