Techno Savy

Recent days everyone talks about Chinese speed, Cost and work practices. The reason for this trend is because vehicles produced in China takes driving seat in the world market from early 2020. Until then, Automotive market was completely dominated by German/European OEMs. Why this change? How can a newbie dominate the market this fast. Already, Lot of discussions and drill down done by many analysts trying to understand the whys.

But I like to shed light on another dimension which was less discussed.

Naturally, once we became good on something and the competition is singular, we stop thinking and enter into a saturation phase where we decide what others expect or want. But this is true until someone brings a new idea to the table.

China was the one who brought this new way of thinking in automotive design. They watched the Mobile phone evolution and customer interest for features other than the product primary feature – “Calling”. They saw customer was really curious and interested to buy the product which can be used in many other ways. This same analogy was introduced into automotive space which made the difference in my opinion.

Global and regional OEMs was concentrating on technology like autonomous driving, alternate fuel with heavy investment assuming that this was market driver. Chinese OEM thought differently without any prejudice. Their bet was affordable vehicle with hell a lot of features like best comfort, luxury and finish which was only given by premium OEMs until then. This was a disruption which helped Chinese OEM to take upper hand over the global market than any other factors.

Few global OEMs from far east had understood this sooner but tried to balance both technology and feature with Affordable cost and others follow. At this point, the competition starts peaking up with respect to Cost, time to market etc…

I believe at least now, we understood that
1. Ideas are not meant to be single dimension but can be multi-dimension. 2. Prejudice can kill ideas and cost dearly.
3. Even an expert can be wrong, and a newbie can be right.
4. Cost and time may be an edge factor, but experience is always main factor.

Please let me know your views in the comments.