There was a time when western automakers were bold, confident, and flush with cash, and auto shows like Paris, Geneva, and New York were must-see occasions for the automotive enthusiast.
Recent times have quashed that once raucous vitality into barely a murmur. Concept cars are a dying trend, launches are made online rather than at the big shows, and some shows have been moved or even canceled altogether.
China, however, has unequivocally bucked the trend. Untainted by Dieselgate and somehow barely even registering Covid, the country’s automotive scene seems to be going from strength to astronomical strength.
Once known for copycat designs and substandard products, Chinese automakers are exploding with confidence, imagination, and technical prowess. If western brands could be excused for not comprehending the scale of the change in China after almost four years without guests and media from abroad, the 2023 Shanghai Auto Show was less a slap across the cheek and more a direct volley into the nether regions.
Let’s pull apart what will likely go down as one of the most significant motor shows in automotive history.
Irrepressible Scale
After the warm-up act that was a delayed Guangzhou Auto Show in January, all eyes were on Shanghai where many were expecting a renewed assault from local brands. They weren’t wrong.
One China watcher claimed over 1,200 models and 1,413 vehicles were displayed at the show, with 93 global debuts, 64 concepts, and 271 new energy vehicles, 186 of which were from Chinese brands.
In practice, it felt every bit as enormous as the numbers suggest. Our full show walkthrough (see the end of article) lasted a full three and a half hours without sitting in a single car and everywhere you looked there were either new brands or new product lines on the show.
For the most part, it seemed that everyone was here too, minus a few embattled brands, perennial show skippers Wuling/Baojun, Jidu, Renault, and Ferrari. The SAR Mecha also missed a show for once, which raises some questions.
Blowing hot and cold
Many have commented that China’s auto market is due a consolidation and that may be true, but if anyone was feeling the heat it wasn’t the locals. Everywhere you looked on media day, foreign executives carried furrowed brows and foreign journalists’ wide eyes.
That being said, the stands of the major foreign brands were no wilting flowers – externally at least they are very much up for this fight.
But the momentum, and in many cases the affection, is clearly with the homegrown heroes. Start-ups like NIO, XPeng, Zeekr, and Yangwang enjoyed enormous audiences with many queuing to get into the stand or their desired models, but popularity wasn’t exclusively for them with state-owned brands also enjoying throngs of visitors.
Zeekr Press Conference
If the density of a crowd can be used as a barometer for enthusiasm, then Mercedes, BMW and MINI are also in good health for the time being, the crowd crushes on the latter two suggesting neither were affected by the uproar on Chinese social media after supposed racist ice cream distribution. Another storm in a social media teacup.
Audiences were decidedly thinner on the Nissan and Honda stands, plus the American trio of Cadillac, Chevrolet and Buick, though the time of day you experienced the stands also played a part so let’s not put any nails in coffins just yet.
