FIERCE COMPETITION
This year, companies are also jostling to sell space, analysts say, with roomy SUVs’ new growth area targeting customers prioritising seating and comfort.
China “has become a customer retention and replacement/upgrade-driven market, and these big SUVs address that need,” independent analyst Lei Xing wrote in a blog this week.
Firms have flooded the domestic market in recent years with trade-in schemes, offering huge discounts to customers to give up their old car for a new one.
The fierce price war led Chinese officials last year to call for tighter price monitoring and improving long-term regulation of competition.
But newcomers appear unfazed, Lei wrote, naming at least eight EV brands from Chinese automakers that have cropped up over the last two years.
Electric vehicles, an area China dominates, are also gaining traction as rising global oil prices linked to the Middle East war push drivers away from fossil fuel-powered models.
Chinese tech on display Friday went beyond the road.
Dozens of people queued to clamber into an enormous air taxi, a 10-seater from Chinese aviation startup AutoFlight, part of China’s wider push to dominate the low-attitude economy.
For Chinese auto enthusiast Dai, domestic EVs were the expo’s clear main characters.
“In comparison, foreign brands seem to have a weaker presence and less visibility,” the 30-year-old influencer, who gave only his surname, said.
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