Presentation of the new Chery brand Omoda in Amsterdam. The fighting spirit laps against the skirting boards. The managers can’t stop talking about their E5, an SUV in EX30 and Kona waters. Take the plunge, that is their message. They think they have a car for young, fashionable types. The collaboration with a major player in the dealer market is almost complete, they promise. And of course there is more news in store, just wait.
Then we can smell the Omoda. After a mini lap in a parking lot, literally a few hundred meters between the pylons, a Chery manager wants to know how I rate the E5 on a scale of 0 to 10. I politely explain why that question is premature. Then I am asked to fill out a form on the spot with additional opinions about a car that I have hardly seen. What I think are the coolest features, who I see as the main competitors. Calm down, guys, calm down.
A week later I see the bus of a foundation specialist in Groningen declaring itself ‘Specialist in pile systems for limited spaces’. What a wonderfully down-to-earth language. At least there someone with a purpose is solving a real problem. Chinese car manufacturers are administering marketing exams and parroting our big words. We That’s the best thing ever? She Blue Sky Coming and Build Your Dreams.
It shows where they stand in the race. They really innovate there, and on an enormous scale; the market conquest of the Chinese battery industry is impressive despite the massive state subsidies, but towards the masses they are product-oriented to the core. The business is the alpha and omega. It’s all about sales. The Netherlands is a kind of questionnaire for Omoda. Key question: how do we target target groups? Answer: by meeting all their wishes. Does the buyer want a lot for little? We’ll take care of it. Design? Something for everyone, the golden mean. Ticking all the boxes, as they say. Electrically adjustable seats, digital dashboard à la Kia, seat massage and mood lighting, voice control and premium audio, multimedia screen à la Tesla, carriage à la Model 3 or Kona, Pokémon headlights, dripping taillights and multi-colored wheels à la everyone, price consciously slightly lower the average.
The West will learn that. However, the large melting pot rarely produces characteristic cars. Strange: while Chinese brands buy away top European designers on a large scale, their models remain clinically anonymous. They are not created from an inner drive, they serve an opportunistic you-ask-we-run mentality. Even if they surpass Tesla in terms of quality and match European manufacturers technologically, even if they cost less, they will miss out pedigree aesthetic and technological necessity. They are not that much cheaper than the established class.
The customer seems to feel that too. It doesn’t bite as hard as the Chinese hoped. Worrying stories about contingents of unsold cars in European ports are growing, while Chinese brands are selling like hot cakes in their home country. I think I understand why Chinese goods are booming there, while sales here are slow to get going, with temporary exceptions such as the MG ZS and the MG 4. The feared Chinese advance seems to be halted by a cultural difference that the Chinese do not or insufficiently understand. They do not provide us with hard and fast motives to purchase their products.
Ultimately, I suspect that European consumers do not want a Model 3 derivative for anything less, no matter how good the BYD Seal is – because in terms of value for money there is little better on the market. They want the real dealJust as they don’t buy a B-brand laptop if they can afford a MacBook. Apart from the price, which only works if it really breaks away from the competition, they test for product quality and distinctiveness. The Chinese score reasonably to very good on the first criterion, zero to low on the second. And for the time being they are not overtaking the technological vanguard. Whatever battery enjoyment they have to offer, they do not charge faster and do not go hundreds of kilometers further than the Teslas with their wonderful Supercharger network.
Find what you want, but Tesla was immediately in a class of its own, tech-driven and insanely innovative with a flow of ideas from its own kitchen. Musk compensated for the lack of history with the DNA of a utopian master plan that he realized step by step. Teslas have had their own style both inside and out since day one.
The big problem of Chinese car manufacturers is the lack of authenticity. With all due respect for their incredible drive and qualitative growth curve, with all due respect for BYD and Nio, I do not covet even one Chinese person. I cannot disguise my cultural bias and fully acknowledge that some European and Asian manufacturers copy each other as much as the Chinese copy them. But for the Chinese it becomes worrying when the average consumer feels the same way I do, and it looks like that. Then only a stunt prize co-financed by them and our governments or a solid state battery with a range of a thousand kilometers will help. We will see.
Okay, the electric Mercedes and the beautiful BMW iX are not going well here either, even though they are technically and aesthetically interesting cars. The stagnation of the European plug market is also our problem, the Chinese can take that point. But I increasingly doubt that they will turn the European car market upside down, as I also thought until recently. Perhaps the cultural gap between China and Europe is still too deep.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl