Chinese Cars

[rtt_rules]

Don't like Chinese cars, or think they are a fad, think again.

2025 : Chinese brands captured 20% of the Australian New car market

2026 : YTD, it's over 25%

This time last year the forecast was for Chinese brands to occupy 30% of the Australian market by 2030 on the back of strong demand for Chinese BEV whose quality is improving and often exceeding legacy markers, 30% is now looking low and more likely 35 - 45 %. Only Australia's love of dual cabs and especially the Ranger and Hilux are slowing this movement compared to other countries.

The boom in Chinese cars is also translating to a boom in BEV growth with now 50% of the Australian new car market expected to be BEV by 2030.

by 2035, the major Chinese car brands will be as normalised as the Koreans.

So the question really is, which legacy makers will abandon Australia first?

[Merc1107]

All the late model Haval, GWM and MGs I've been in have been vile rotboxes. I find their aesthetics oddly-proportioned (although that's an issue across the industry given the trend towards giant wheels, badges and grilles on anything from a Yaris sized car all the way to a ute).

What really took the cake for me was an MG whose "infotainment" system remained at full brightness even with the headlights on, and multiple Havals whose indicator sound didn't play at a steady beat, instead choosing to skip blink sounds. Two fairly elementary concepts, completely wrong... Makes you wonder what else is done badly.

They can keep their crappy cars as far as I'm concerned.

[Enviro 500]

To think MG were English in the past.

Also, Geely owns Volvo. So the Swedish automaker is technically Chinese in a way.

And speaking of legacy automakers, we've already lost GMH.

[rtt_rules]

I've driven two MG's a rental in Australia in 2022 (ZS?), auto drove it over 600 km ACT - Tumut - Central Coast - KSA and the next size down one in Albania again a rental in 2024 drove over 5 days from southern city to capital across similar standard of roads and terrain as Australia, cannot remember if Auto or Man.

Both drove fairly well with the exception the one I had in Australia had only a 1500 cc engine and was significantly underpowered. The engine bar even looked spartan with such a small engine. The model in Albania felt more balanced in power to weight ratio.

The Australian one was the first car I've driven with land control, and it worked fairly well even on country roads. The cruise control suffered in performance and was harsh due to the underpowered engine.

Anyway, overall I thought the standard of both cars was on par with Japanese and Koreans, apart from small engine.

I've ridden in a number of Chinese cars in both China and UAE as very popular here now and overall, I didn't think they had something quirky compared to normal practice. Maybe Merc's experience was with cars set up that way, I don't know.

I'm currently baby-sitting a fairly new BMW X2 and this has more friggin quirks than you can poke a stick at. The owner asked me to look after it because after two weeks of not being driven when she's away the battery would go flat and she would need to get it towed. A bit of googling and it shouldn't do that and could be linked to settings or the FOB inside the house too close and not letting it go into deep sleep mode, which it's not as its sending her messages of its battery condition while she is only her 3mth hike in UK. As for parking, it's bloody hard to put it in a tight space as it's trying to protect itself and alarms go off, the proximity CCTV grossly distorts the distance etc to the object.

YES, GM is gone, others will follow. Nissan as a global company may not survive. Prediction by former CEO of Stellanis was that up to 1/3 of non-Chinese car makers will close or merge by 2040.

The Australian car market is already over supported by too many OEM's. Therefore, many models are sold in very low numbers and good luck with parts when they are +10 years old or even a warranty claim. It's basically why the Australian car assembly industry had no chance and was lucky to last as long as it did.

I think the big Chinese brands, Toyota, Kia and Hyundai will survive.

Nissan, Suzuki, Mazada, Honda etc will struggle especially as the bulk of their models are under attack by BEV equivalents which people want.

Ford is already down to a one trick pony and the day the Ranger / Everest sales collapse, say good-bye.

The dual cab industry is for the first time seeing real not legacy competition, but they will struggle to penetrate beyond the big cities and close regional areas. Hilux, D-max and Ranger and their wagon cousins will survive here.

FYI - UAE is currently ~12% BEV and growing fast, target is 30% by 2030 and they are building large number charging stations everywhere as most people live in apartments. Australia Q1 2026 was 15% BEV.

[Heihachi_73]

I don't care where the car comes from as long as it works (but really, the government should be putting every cent into public transport instead, not private cars), petrol-powered cars should have been dead a hundred years ago but America had a century's worth of oil to sell so they killed off the electric car which had already been a thing for thirty years, which had been held back by crappy batteries, zero funding, the great depression and world wars either side. Chinese cars are in the same place as the Japanese cars of the 60s/70s and the Korean cars of the 80s/90s. Russia would have been up there too if their government hadn't gone to s&#t the instant the iron curtain came crashing down (contrary to popular opinion, the "classic" Lada 2107 etc. wasn't the world's worst car by a long shot, Americans laughed at it solely because it was a foreign car with a four cylinder engine, as opposed to a Cadillac with a 500 cubic inch V8 outputting less than 100 hp).

If someone in Australia decides to bring Holden back from the dead it will most certainly be a range of rebadged Chinese EVs in the sedan market (BYD), Barina/Captiva-sized hatchbacks in the small car/crossover market (MG), and body-on-frame pickup trucks (GWM) because that's what the market has been forcibly reduced to by Big Auto. You won't get a Commodore with sedan, wagon and ute variants, those days are finished. At most they might resurrect the Commodore badge for a Mazda3-sized EV since full-sized sedans are also finished, having been entirely replaced with dual-cab pickup trucks.

Looking toward China in the 2020s is no different to the late 1950s when the very 1940s-looking FJ Holden got too stale and they had to come crawling to Germany for inspiration (but Don't Mention The War, so the FE Holden was of course marketed as Australia's Own Car like it had been dug straight out of the Pilbara) as American cars were deemed way too large even then (which didn't stop Holden from also building those, albeit as Canadian CKD imports rather than from Detroit because Commonwealth), or the 70s/80s with Japanese cars (Holden with Isuzu/Nissan/Suzuki; Button Plan badge swapping with Toyota being unrelated), or the 90s/2000s with Korean cars (Holden with Daewoo, where the Camira's spiritual successor ended up, engine and all).

[rtt_rules]

Yeah, I tend to agree. Putting a Holden Badge on a Chinese car will be as nationalistic popular as when they put a Holden badge on a Corolla, or Suz Swift. And to be honest I think most car makers will see straight through this idea for what it is, unless its actually assembled here.

The Aust car industry was always the Australian foreign car assembly industry. Even the cars designed here were made here by foreign companies prior to their global platforms. Once the global platform technology was rolled out, the end was nigh. People can blame TA as much as the like, but TA didn't stop Aussies buying Australian assembled cars, which is what killed the industry off. The writing was on the wall in the late 2000's when Toyota refused to assemble the Fortuner in Australia and insiders told me Toyota was looking for an out for some time, but they just didn't want to be first, despite being the only exporter of the three.

Lowering tariffs didn't kill the industry, it just meant it was never sustainable and why should people who didn't want a Falcon, Commodore, Camry etc have to pay more for a car when the one they want isn't made locally and its not just about same class of car, it was for a different class of car.

Interestingly, a few immigrant friends who arrived in Aus in the 2000's and early 2010's when they asked locals what car to buy, they were all amazed at how frequently they heard the comments, "anything but Aussie made". I'm talking multiple people who didn't know each other.

In the 2010's we thought we lost out to mostly the growing and heavily protected Thailand car industry, however the sleeping tiger was always China. It's was simply too big and too focused on making western / Japanese standard cars to be ignored. I remember in the late 2000's watching the news showing Chinese car assembly line running at a car every 2min. They said for now Australia and the west is safe, until their quality and safety standards catch up.....

Even Thailand car manufacturing is now threat from China

Thailand's automotive industry is under significant pressure from Chinese automakers. While China has invested billions in Thailand's EV transition, their aggressive exports, price wars, and supply chain dominance threaten to displace established Japanese manufacturers and undermine domestic manufacturing value

"Historically, Japan has controlled about 90% of the Thai market for decades. With the influx of cheaper Chinese EVs, companies like Subaru have exited local production, Suzuki announced a plant closure, and Honda consolidated operations, which severely impacts traditional auto-worker jobs."

Note : Thailand Govt has a protectionist policy that at some point the Chinese car makers need to move to local production, which basically means the Japanese will likely be pushed out or significantly reduced and as per above, it is happening already.

Regardless, see the common trend, Chinese car makers investing in and importing BEV's displacing established Japanese car makers who have been stick in neutral when it comes to BEV's thinking that H2 was their future. WRONG!!!

Also note people say China is dumping. It's actually not, domestic competition in China is cutthroat with over 100 car makers leaving low margins. They are pushing for exports to get better margins, if they were dumping it would be reverse.

It was always going to be a challenge with a country of 1.4B people and a very organised govt who is very focused on developing China to be self sufficient in most areas. They have more than the critical mass of buyers and well organised govt policy towards supporting BEV, i.e. public chargers in the car parks of many buildings and other locations.


But this is the key part that so few Aussies and certain political parties are struggling with.

Q. WHY IS CHINA SO FOCUSED ON MAKING BEV'S?

A. CHINA IMPORTS 70 - 75% OF ITS OIL NEEDS AND RISING. THEY WANT SELF SUFFICENCY FOR ECONOMIC AND STRATEGIC DEFENSE REASONS.

Meanwhile here we are in an Australia, importing over 90% of our liquid hydrocarbons (costing us over $25B pa and over 100,000 well paid jobs) and what is the policy of much of the right side of govt? You guessed it, more fuel cars and drill for non-existent oil or high-cost reserves (talk to any geologist on why they know the Australian continent does not have good potential for significant economically recoverable oil reserves beyond Bass Strait) to be refined at refineries that are not economically viable without a subsidy. And they usually promote this with an Australian flag behind them pretending to be patriotic. It's like Trump telling Americans foreign govts will pay for the tariffs.

Perhaps, just perhaps the Chinese are actually doing us long-term favor that many of our own leaders would rather play politics over.

[Heihachi_73]

Regarding "anything but Aussie made", I remember hearing back in the 90s that the most Australian car on the market was ironically the Mitsubishi Magna, I think it was the TR/TS series which was given that distinction (it might have been the TE though).

In the 2010s we lost out because Ford and Holden were killed off, putting an abrupt end to rear wheel drive sedans, wagons and utes, leaving only the Thai Tonka Trucks or their oversized American counterparts as the jack-of-all-trades (and master of none - no big six or V8 for the Thai trucks, no one-tonner option as the extra cab takes up the tray space, and skittish roadholding instead of being a V8 Supercar in tradies' clothes, something we had fixed way back in the 1970s with the HZ Kingswood and "blue oval" XC - how many times do you see a tradie truck or 70 series Land Cruiser "ute" gradually lose it at all of 30 km/h on a wet roundabout and end up doing a 180 - that only happened in a Falcodore with a heavy right foot or dodgy tyres caused by said heavy right foot, or a cheap front wheel drive econobox which couldn't power itself out of the skid or the driver panicked and let off mid-turn).

A footnote goes to the Kia Stinger, which as a RWD sedan (actually a 5 door liftback as the boot isn't separate from the rear window) was intended to compete with the Falcodore (and indirectly, the Camry, Magna/380 and BMWs/Audis/Volvos etc.) but was too little too late, lacked a much-anticipated ute variant that everyone was screaming out for (instead we copped the hideous Tasman after an Edsel-like behind-the-curtain reveal that took an eternity) and had no market left by the time it came out so it became a one hit wonder due to no-one buying them (380s and ZB Commodores being in the same boat).

[rtt_rules]

That was the problem for the Aussie car makers, they made large RWD sedans with the exception of Magna and Aurion, but who else in the world wanted these cars in anything beyond a few novel low volume sales. Once the Aussies had moved on to the high powered and higher std of fit dual cab. (compared to the bare industrial gutless wonders of the 80's through to early 2000's) and the booming SUV market. These car large RWD car models had no future.

Australia was never going to make the Hilux, Ranger, Rav4 etc here as to do so with sales of only around 50,000 a year on a good year the car makers had to export over 75% of the production, which Toyota etc knew was never going to work.

So the Aussie car industry only had a future while Aussies bought cars the rest of the world didn't want in large numbers.

[Merc1107]

That was the problem for the Aussie car makers, they made large RWD sedans with the exception of Magna and Aurion, but who else in the world wanted these cars in anything beyond a few novel low volume sales.

What has Germany produced in droves in the same timeframe? Medium-large RWD sedans.

[rtt_rules]

That was the problem for the Aussie car makers, they made large RWD sedans with the exception of Magna and Aurion, but who else in the world wanted these cars in anything beyond a few novel low volume sales.

What has Germany produced in droves in the same timeframe? Medium-large RWD sedans.

True, generally more expensive and global brands and models to justify the volumes.