The meeting is now the number one event on the automotive planet. The major manufacturers have been waiting for the Shanghai Motor Show to unveil their latest models: Volkswagen will present a high-end electric sedan, the ID.7, the day before the event, which will last from April 18 to April 27. Mercedes will exhibit a very luxurious battery-powered urban 4 x 4, Mercedes-Maybach EQS 680. The Chinese brands BYD, Nio, XPeng and Li Auto, specializing in electrics, have all planned to reveal new models during the Chinese meeting. .
Electrification will be the dominant theme of the Shanghai 2023 event, the first to attract international players after three years of Chinese border closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic. And the last motor show that really matters in the world, while manufacturers invest less and less in these events to prefer other communication channels, online in particular. But for the major players in the sector, there is no question of missing this meeting which takes place every year alternately between Shanghai and Beijing. With 23 million vehicles sold in 2022, China is by far the world’s largest market, ahead of the United States (13 million).
China is above all the country where the electrification of automobile fleets has made the most headway, with 5.67 million electric (78%) and hybrid (22%) vehicles sold in 2022. One in four new vehicles is electrified and one in five is pure electric. Despite a sluggish start to the year, the China Passenger Car Association predicts that 8 million to 9 million so-called new-energy vehicles will be sold this year, or around a third of sales. An energy transition that also has the effect of shaking up the established order between the different brands: “Five six years ago, foreign manufacturers were the stars of the Beijing and Shanghai Motor Shows. Today, everyone wants to know what BYD, Tesla and Nio are doing [trois spécialistes de l’électrique]. I wonder if the traditional builders are going to get some attention”comments Tu Le, founder of the consulting firm Sino Auto Insights.
Generous grants
Thanks to an ambitious sector development plan, Accompanied for many years by generous production and purchase subsidies, China is leading the transition to electric vehicles, in terms of both sales and production. BYD, the leader in electric cars in China, neck and neck with Tesla on a global level, started out by producing batteries before embarking on the production of electric cars and buses.
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