What is the world’s largest car market truly about?

’40 TFSIe’ - a designation that doesn’t exactly roll off one’s tongue, does it? This is no coincidence, for that particularly irritating bit of nomenclature was instigated at the behest of none other than ‘China’. Standing for the Chinese market in general and Chinese customers in particular, ‘China’ has become a cypher for much that is wrong about the automobile today - beyond the mere model name of the Audi A3’s 1.4 litre plug-in hybrid variant. At least this is what many a western car designer, engineer or marketer tend to whisper when pressed for background information regarding a particularly dubious feature - decidedly off the record, of course, and occasionally accompanied by discreet eye-rolling. 

So why do Western car makers feel dutybound to fit ever more absurdly sized grilles to their products? ‘China’. Why do touchscreen controls supplant buttons where there’s absolutely no good reason for it? ‘China’. Why is there so much superfluous decorum (slashes, chrome, fake vents) added to so many car’s exteriors right now? ‘China’. But of course. 

As the list of questionable automotive trends being blamed onto ‘China’ is seemingly endless, only the most disingenuous of minds wouldn’t eventually start wondering whether those alleged demands coming from ‘China’ might actually be a red herring - a scapegoat for many of the industry’s own, less enlightened decisions. But in order to find out how much truth there’s to ‘China’s’ alleged misdeeds, one must find out more about China in the first place - the country, the culture, the people and the car designers, without any inverted commas.

What becomes clear early on during such a process is that the Chinese indeed view the automobile completely differently from Europeans, Americans and the Japanese. Little wonder, given the Chinese automotive socialisation is so drastically different: a generation ago, ownership of a sophisticated automobile would’ve seemed as alien a concept to the average Chinese as space travel does to us today. Whereas westerners grew up with the automobile as a family member-of-sorts, which often entailed allegiance to a certain brand, the Chinese only became car owners & users on a wide scale over the past three decades. The same timeframe, incidentally, it took the mobile phone to turn from luxury high-tech good into everyday appliance. 

Indeed, the mobile phone acts as the main reference to the automobile in China. Both are viewed as essential everyday devices, with the appeal of each specific product mostly gauged on the basis of the features provided: the more of them being included, the more attractive the product, in either case. In that same spirit, a typical Chinese car’s prestige isn’t measured in brake horsepower, but display diameter. This isn’t solely, but also to with the complete absence of any racing tradition and heritage in China - driving fast simply doesn’t hold the same appeal, just as the heroics of superior car control are lost on the wider public. One rides in a car with as little bother as possible, instead of driving it at its limits. In this context, the culture of oversteer, screeching tyres and shrieking engines may be viewed like a primitive ritual dance with no relevance to today’s motoring requirements whatsoever - imagine an audience of Asian digital natives watching American Graffiti and trying to discern what it’s supposed to do with their lives. In the sharpest of contrast, an interior monitoring system that responds to the driver reaching for the lower lip with the index finger by lowering the side window, in preparation of a cigarette being lit is seen as not only a comfort feature, but relevant technological progress: the difference between a competent product and this season’s must-have.

An illustration by automotive designer, Han Cheng, sums up young Chinese customers’ stance towards the car: It depicts a family of five, plus two dogs, engaging in a round of karaoke inside their seven-seater, with daddy reclining in the driver’s chair. A realistic representation of how a Chinese family might use its car on a daily basis this most certainly is not, but its exaggerated nature highlights the gulf between the Chinese perspective and established markets’ view of the automobile. The European take on this image would be a young father putting on a beachside barbecue for his family, next to a compact SUV parked in the sand. But such an expression of freedom holds little appeal to Chinese car owners, hence the focus on convenience and entertainment provided inside the automobile, rather than any promise of adventure. 

Generally speaking, the interior is of far greater importance in China than elsewhere, as illustrated by the prestige associated with large UI screens. Whereas in traditional markets, money would be spent on larger wheels and a power upgrade, additional online or voice-controlled features are far more likely to attract the spending of additional Yuan. Alongside the screen diameter, another measure is also regularly used in order to value a car: space. «Chinese customers’ most important and often quoted dimension when comparing a car is the wheelbase. Because they equate the wheelbase length with interior roominess», explains Ajay Jain, Head of Advanced Design at Mahindra and Mahindra and previously with Geely. «A Toyota Alphard, Buick GL8 or Mercedes Benz Vito is still considered more luxurious than a Rolls-Royce. Chauffeur-driven, of course.» This space is then used in a way to while away the hours spent inside the cars - with various ways of consuming digital entertainment, rather than indulging in the joy of driving, defining a pleasant automotive experience. «In China, we have the most digitalised cars in the world,» argues Matteo Fioravanti, Design Director at Technicon Design and an Italian expatriate currently calling Shanghai his home. «You never ever use your wallet over here. Even beggars in the street receive money via WeChat.»

To those unacquainted with it: WeChat is an all-encompassing Chinese mega-app, which features not just messaging, online shopping and digital payment functions, but also accts as vaccine passport these days. Outside China, WeChat is viewed with some suspicion, as it is being monitored by Chinese authorities for censorship and mass surveillance purposes - but in China, it’s an indispensable tool that puts the country at the forefront of the digital revolution. Seamless integration with a car’s user interface is hence a basic requirement - unlike data protection. 

Despite this emphasis on passive driving and connectivity, the Chinese automobile isn’t a simple expression of collectivist thinking. The emphasis on personal space - which constitutes a true premium in densely populated areas - is a first indication that things aren’t as simple, but matters of style and consumption habits are another. China’s politics may officially be communist, but the country’s nascent car culture is hardly conformist.

Fan Zhang, Design Vice President at GAC Motor, is quick to get a particularly trite cliché out the way in this context: «Copycat designs don’t sell. Young customers are far too educated for that. This second generation of car owners is united in its dislike of copycats.» In addition to the token superior user interface and user experience, Fan Zhang identifies another core trait of the ‘native’ Chinese automobile: «Customers tire of cars easily. Dominant types of design only last for so long.» Right now, he characterises the dominant type thus: «A front fascia with eyebrows that give a mean look - that’s a Chinese front.» But this front may fall out of favour again any second, given the general absence of brand loyalty and insatiable hunger for the new - hence the need to redesign cars at a pace not unlike the American car industry’s in the 1950s. «Styling needs to change fast, be new, which is why we have to run our company efficiently. We introduce new styling every 24 months, but design quality mustn’t suffer.»

Matteo Fioravanti confirms this relentless pace: «We work on a 24-hour-shift in order to meet schedules. When we end our shift here in Shanghai, our colleagues in Italy and Germany take over, then the US studio, before it’s our turn again. Only this way can we keep up with these compressed timeframes.» Fan Zhang has personally experienced what happens if design doesn’t keep up with customers’ speed: «Slow evolvement doesn’t work in China. Our competitors studied what we had done at GAC in detail and responded with their own product. We’d been a pioneer [being a domestic design-led brand], but were not prepared to be always innovative.» This hesitancy was punished immediately, to which Fan Zhang and his team reacted by stepping up their efforts to reassert GAC as a trendsetter: «It’s like a game, it’s so fast. Each brand is trying so hard to survive, but only the winner can survive.»

The Chinese car industry’s dog-eat-dog character, not to mention its products' focus on digital gadgets and planned obsolescence (of the visual kind) do little to tug at traditionalist’s heartstrings. However, the Chinese car market resembles the consumer electronics sector not just in terms of its ephemeral, ever-changing attitude, but also in terms of scale: designing, building, marketing and selling 24 million cars sold per year may not appear sustainable, but is the Chinese reality for the foreseeable future.

Aesthetically, the Chinese car is coming of age at immense speed, which can be best observed in the EV sector. There, Chinese car makers feel less inclined to pay tribute to western traditions and the established visual vocabulary, which bluntly manifests itself in the absence of fake grilles. A brief look at the new models unveiled at the recent Shanghai Auto show suggests that German premium car makers in particular don’t put grotesque pseudo grilles onto their electric cars because of Chinese demands - but because they believe (or hope?) that this vacuous gesture suffices at embodying an amalgamation of heritage and progressiveness. In contrast, Chinese car makers embrace the new engineering specifications, what with the blank fronts of Chinese EVs not feeling bound to any tradition. Instead, they stand for the next chapter in automotive design, owing to their home market’s lack of interest in the past. 

European and American car makers are weighed down by a latent suspicion that the best times might be behind them. Chinese car makers, despite most of them likely to be but a faint memory in a decade’s time, are convinced that the future is theirs for the taking. In design terms, the first steps towards this future may still be laking much in the way of expression, but the blank canvas at the front of Chinese EVs at least leaves space for future imagination and creativity, instead of trying to evoke memories through the application of grotesque homages to the past. 

It’s not as though each and every China-centric trend is applaudable - the excessive application of touchscreens, for example, makes an awful lot more sense in slow inner-city traffic than on the Autobahn or British b-roads. Treating the automobile merely as a technological device and hence ignoring its cultural meaning may also cause romantics to cringe, but this cold stance towards a century of internal combustion engined motoring entails the crucial advantage of complete openness for the dawning electric age. 

‘China’, that cypher for sales-driven silliness, is and always was a manifestation of arrogance - an insinuation that there is no alternative to exploiting this giant, greedy market’s absence of a car culture, its inherent lack of sophistication and taste. But today’s Chinese customers’ competence deserves acknowledgment, just as their openness to change commands respect. For certain, the car of the future will not be merely created for China, but with the Chinese.  

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