Always faster. In a nutshell, before an audience of French automakers gathered in Beijing on Tuesday, Jingcheng Li, vice president of strategy and development for Asia at equipment maker Forvia, summarized the acceleration in design time for powered car models. (among others) by Chinese brands.
“40 days. This is our record in installing and commissioning a factory from scratch. This factory was for BYD. Before it normally took us two years.”
Brands that exhibit their new products at the Beijing Motor Show starting this Thursday morning. More than thirty world premieres are expected.
BYD takes a year to design a new model
The symbolic group for this acceleration is BYD. The country’s number 1 takes a year to develop a new model when the average is around two and a half or three, or even four years for most brands. Launching the R5 at Renault in three years (and therefore saving a year on the manufacturer’s traditional practices) was, for example, experienced internally as a feat, achieved at the cost of profound operational changes.
Brands are also concerned about shortening the life cycles, that is, the marketing time, of the models: from three to five years, compared to the almost seven years on average in the sector. Enough to renew the ranges more and more quickly. But why speed up so much?
“There are so many brands on the market, how can we stand out? We have to renew ourselves quickly,” said Jenny Wang, director of automotive equipment for Michelin’s China region.
The arrival of electricity and increasingly innovative technologies also explains this acceleration. Renewing more quickly allows you to introduce the latest technologies that are constantly evolving.
Develop cars “like we develop a smartphone”
Many new brands also do not come from traditional automobiles, they did not make gasoline or diesel cars before making electric cars. Rather, they were often founded by electronics engineers with a different philosophy.
“In electronics, advances are counted in days and not in years. Let’s think about Xiaomi, three years ago they decided to make a car, they didn’t know anything about it, they are launching it now and it is a success,” continues Jenny Wang. There have already been registered 70,000 orders for the Xiaomi SU7.
Spending time on sensors and electronic components, and less on hardware and materials, sums up the philosophy of many Chinese brands with the desire to simplify design. They develop cars “like we develop a smartphone,” confesses a French industrialist.
Renew the “experience” of the car
This acceleration is also possible thanks to a certain financial comfort. “They invest a lot, both in energy with tens of thousands of engineers and in R&D,” underlines Jenny Wang.
Another more philosophical element also supports this frenetic race, according to our specialist: experience. More than an object or a status, some customers look for an experience in a car. Hence a constant need for novelty. Should we then fear the planned obsolescence of vehicles, not because of the durability of the parts, as one association mentions, but because they will soon no longer be in fashion?
In any case, a shared fashion dominates the Beijing show: that of SUVs. In China, more than one in every two cars sold is an SUV.
Source: BFM TV
