I was telling a few of my close friends about the Chinese made mini SUV and how I will be reviewing it in Social Media. I was surprised it sparked a debate between us about China-made cars and whether or not we should even be entertaining the thought of buying one.
But seeing how Huawei smartphones are made, it’s hard to ignore what China has to offer. Even the branded shoes that we wear, the television sets, our refs our houses. Yes, a lot of our possessions may have US or Japanese brands on them but they are actually China made. It's basically the same with cars.
Not a lot of people know this but Volvo, a Swedish car brand, is now owned and operated by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group since 2010. They also own a large stake in famous Sport car manufacturer, Lotus.
Another company that was acquired by the Chinese from the British is the classic brand “MG” or known as Morris Garages. Bought by Chinese automotive giant SAIC motor, MG is one of the six Chinese brands that are available in the Metro. Although you might say these transfer of ownerships might not relate to good quality cars, certainly the transfer of technology sped up the Chinese automakers’ know how in order to compete with the leading car manufacturers of the world.
Given the 11 years since Geely acquired Volvo, the evidence of such great improvement is now shown in their models. If you sat in a Chinese domestic branded car 11 years ago, you would have thought it was an oversized version of Ken’s car from Mattel’s Barbie Collection.
This is clearly what the transfer of technology can do. The foreign management through a joint venture worked wonders for the Chinese Auto makers. Not to mention the reverse engineering and copying of popular models from the West. Yes, they are extra good at this. But I have to mention that Japan copied products from the Westerners too in the 1950s and 60s.
The big difference between yesterday’s Chinese imitation and today is the quality and the design. Chinese carmakers are focusing their extensive manufacturing expertise on quality cars at a tad off the price offered by the leading auto makers. Their designs too are very appealing, I would say world class. You only have to visit their showrooms to see what I’m talking about.
But more than just looking good, it's the growth of car production in China in the past decade that makes them inevitable. I was there in late 2019 and I saw how China has grown to be a superpower. Yes, we rode in a luxury commuter, much like the Toyota Alphard, but a Chinese version of it. I was astonished it had all the features of a luxury commuter and more.
Apart from significant car growth over the past decade, automakers are now forced to rethink today's approaches to automobile development especially in vehicle software and electronic architecture as the world leaders’ clamor for greener technology. This is where I believe China has an upper hand, being a strong manufacturer of electronics.
China, according to Edmunds, now makes 4 out of 10 cars manufactured in the world. Almost all of the leading best-selling cars in China being the product of joint ventures with foreign manufacturers. There's a good reason for that. Chinese carmakers mostly made cars only for the Chinese market in the past decades and if a foreign carmaker wanted to produce cars in China, it was required by law to partner with Chinese manufacturers.
When the Korean Cars came to the Philippines, we had so much brand hesitation. It didn’t help that the first batches of Korean built cars were awful. But unlike the first batches of Korean Cars, China-made cars are better and they are here to stay. It's inevitable. Instead of denying them, we should be celebrating the fact that they're becoming steadily, world class manufacturers.