China Is Way, Way Ahead in the Car Business—Can the West Catch Up?

Motor Trend

6 hours ago

It's tricky for Americans to appreciate the magnitude of the technology gap that has formed and continues growing between new Chinese cars and those being produced elsewhere in the developed world. That's because our market has effectively been walled off, at least from China's homegrown brands and global nameplate electric cars. MotorTrend has attempted to lead on American press coverage of this vital market, by producing a documentary on China's inroads to Mexico (and, therefore, North America), attending Chinese auto shows, and by testing more domestic-market Chinese cars than our peer publications.
The West lags behind China's rapid car development due to slower innovation cycles and differing market priorities. To catch up, Western automakers must prioritize speed, adaptability, and cost-efficiency, targeting China as the main competitor, not traditional rivals.
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So we listened, nodded, and took lots of notes as Terry Woychowski—CEO of vehicle benchmarking firm Caresoft Global, addressed the Society of Automotive Analysts and the Automotive Press Association, shared his thoughts on what it might take for The West to begin closing the gap with the Chinese. The question to ask yourselves is, do we have the resolve to implement his suggestions? Speed is a Key Differentiator
China seems to better appreciate that the one thing there's simply no getting any more of, whether by hard work, cunning, guile, or force: time. Once a minute's gone, there's no getting it back. Terry recounted many examples of the huge differences in vehicle development time, noting that China typically spends one and a half to two years developing a new platform, versus legacy OEMs' four to five years. That's how Xpeng developed five platforms in nine years, launching one in 2018, another in 2020, and the next three in 2024.
Volkswagen, by contrast, launched its MEB architecture in 2019; announced PPE in 2019 and launched it in 2025; while SSP was announced in 2021 and is scheduled for the 2028–2029 timeframe. He presented the chart below illustrating the phases of a model development program, each of which established automakers spend three to four times as long completing. Development Cycle Times (in months) Longer Hours
Terry claims his contacts in China report a 9-9-6 paradigm that, frankly, seems utterly anathema to Western sensibilities. Engineers work from 9 in the morning to 9 at night six days per week. It is a pace they become inured to growing up in China, where admission slots to the coveted engineering colleges are extremely competitive. So they reportedly study way harder and party way less throughout their secondary and higher educations.
Terry serves on the College of Engineering Advisory Board at Michigan Technological University, so he took time to visit ShanghaiTech University on a weekend day while in town for the auto show. He reported the library being jammed full. Speed of Innovation
The days of Chinese R&D being jokingly referred to as 'receive and duplicate' instead of "research and development" are long gone. Terry reports BYD has filed as many as 45 patents per day . To date the Chinese giant holds 15 times as many patents as Tesla. Speed of Implementation
Even when they don't think up a great idea on their own, the Chinese are way faster at implementing that idea once they see it. And they put up far less resistance to outside ideas. Some examples Woychowski provided: Tesla implemented its innovative integrated heat pump and EV thermal management 'Octovalve' on the Model Y in March 2020 and Huawei developed a similar 'super-manifold' with heat-pump capability for its AVATR models by mid-2022. Tesla switched from flexible copper onboard power cables used in Model S/Y to a lighter, cheaper, easier-to-install rigid aluminum setup on the Model 3/Y. The Chinese new-energy vehicle startups adopted this practice from their inception, while the legacy EV manufacturers still mainly use copper.
Tesla proposed using the Transformer AI network (large language model) in Full Self Driving in 2021. Great Wall Motor followed suit launching its Highway Pilot in mass production the same year; Nio and Xpeng in 2022; and Li-Auto in 2023. DeepSeek was developed in China by Hangzhou DeepSeek AI Basic Technology Research Co. to make it easier to implement the Transformer AI LLM into automotive platforms. According to Terry, no traditional OEM has deployed it yet.
Tesla introduced Gigacastings, and already Xpeng's are lighter and stronger than Tesla's. Tesla uses 9,000-ton presses; the Chinese are developing 16,000-ton presses that may be able to make an entire half of a car.
The Chinese car buyer's top-five purchase considerations are technology (digital cockpits, smart features, ADAS, etc.), connectivity (embedded cellular connection with smartphone integration and AI assistants), relational priorities (brand status and reputation, OEM-customer ownership experience, riding comfort), non-traditional values (buying smarter, with less regard for traditional brand loyalties, focus on affordability, youthfulness), and environmental priorities (electrification, willingness to pay more for greener tech).
By contrast, Terry says the main North American, European, Korean, and Japanese manufacturers ' top-five priorities are acceleration, power/torque, chassis grip and handling, NVH, and fit/finish. He contends the priority gap between Chinese and global buyers may be narrowing, suggesting a realignment of priorities might be overdue in Western automakers.
Good question. And maybe not. But then again, those cars sell for vastly less money when new, and the march of technological progress may render them unsalable after six or eight years anyway. In that case, maybe they just need to be highly recyclable (or perhaps the third world will soon be able to tap into a huge cache of obsolete but still drivable cars). Structural Cost Advantages
The playing field is not level and may not be level-able. There's no way to put a number on the cost savings of a government regulatory framework that is established and never gets altered by changes in the political winds. But some factors that have been quantified include the general cost to acquire land, raise capital, and borrow money, which is estimated to be 7–9 percent lower for Chinese OEMs. Chinese OEMs and suppliers are each said to be about 7 percent less profitable.
One practice that might suggest potential savings for the establishment is a Chinese auto industry willingness to make common certain products and specifications, sharing some parts across manufacturers and suppliers to lower the cost for all (Caresoft attributes a 7–15 percent savings to this practice). What Must American Companies Do?
Change everything. Bust paradigms. Stop prioritizing features and attributes that customers aren't willing to pay for nor care about. Establish a moon-landing mission mindset and target China as the competition, as opposed to cross-town or trans-Atlantic rivals. Lobby governments in lockstep to reduce structural costs. Most of all, take full advantage of any temporary relief tariffs may afford to lower costs and accelerate development.
China faces some internal headwinds, including gross overcapacity, which is driving both the national impetus to export and an expected consolidation or culling of brands in the next few years. Some suppliers are in tenuous financial shape, which the government is looking to shore up by forcing OEMs to pay suppliers more quickly. But western automakers will only catch up by accelerating their own efforts; not by waiting and hoping for internal troubles to slow China down.