QOTD: Will Chinese Automakers Eat Everyone's Lunch?

Tim Healey
by Tim Healey

I just finished reading a piece that's been bouncing around the Internet for a few days now.

Inside EVs sent automotive journalist Kevin Williams to the Beijing Auto Show, and Williams walked away feeling like Chinese automakers are, generally speaking, building cars that could come to the States and immediately steal plenty of buyers from American, European, Japanese, and Korean automakers.


Williams said he saw plenty of Chinese models, mostly EVs, which appear to be better than the vehicles on offer from Western and other Asian automakers in terms of quality and infotainment tech.

To be fair, the story, while well thought-out and nuanced, is William's take -- he might not be correct in his prediction. But he does take into account the geopolitics at play here and takes a insightful look at the market. His take is that non-Chinese automakers are building products that aren't on par with the Chinese, and that could be a big problem for those automakers.

It's a far cry from the days that Chinese automakers were dismissed as building poorly-made copycats of vehicles sold by legacy automakers. Those days weren't that long ago.

I am curious what your thoughts are. Are Chinese cars about ready to come to other markets and do what the Japanese did decades ago? Or are they being helped in their home market by the government? Is the answer somewhere in between?

Before you answer, go read the story. It's worth your time.

Since this QOTD will touch on politics, I will once again ask you to play nice in the comments. The banhammer is ready.

With that said, you may now sound off below.

[Image: BYD]

Become a TTAC insider. Get the latest news, features, TTAC takes, and everything else that gets to the truth about cars first by  subscribing to our newsletter.

Tim Healey
Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

More by Tim Healey

Comments
Join the conversation
2 of 74 comments
  • MKizzy MKizzy on May 14, 2024

    If China-branded vehicles arrive on these shores filling the gaping hole of sizes, body styles, and price points largely abandoned by established automakers, they will immediately find an interested customer base among those low/middle income consumers whose parents were (un)happily puttering around in old Hyundai Excels and Yugo GVs. Personally, I do think BYD or another of their major automakers will eventually circumvent the tariffs by building in Mexico and sending vehicles north.

  • Daniel J Daniel J on May 16, 2024

    The more I looked into this I'm like..

    Huh? I'm thinking China wants to bring over a 35k nice EV, not some sort of Mitsu Mirage that barely can go highway speeds.

  • FreedMike Toyota used the "Mustang Ecoboost" strategy without the thing that made the strategy a winner for Ford: a much lower price. An Ecoboost Mustang is a legit performer at around $35,000, and Ford dealers are going to deal on them. But the four banger Supra starts at $46,000, and you KNOW Toyota dealers are gonna give you the "adjusted market price" BS. No wonder it failed.
  • SCE to AUX 2652 were sold in the US market last year. Maybe the V6 was all people bought, anyway.
  • MaintenanceCosts "Heritage Package" means more money for, to my eyes, a worse-looking car. I'd LOVE a GT350 but this isn't the one for me.
  • Bd2 So sad toyota can't develop a sportscar on their own, they should just cancel the entire car, it's a pale comparison to the 718 Porsche.
  • Tassos HARD PASS. The god-awful interior alone is reason to reject. DISMAL GRAY. This is a 5-year old cheap Mustang whose foolish owner only put a total of 3k miles (probably hard stop-go, not highway miles) and for that he wants more than he paid for the POS New?? It may initially look different from Tim's usual 35-65 year old heaps of junk, but it sucks just as much. Maybe you should THINK about this Tim. WOuld YOU buy this piece of crap, assuming you finally decided to get a REAL job?
Next