As soon as Chinese tech billionaire and Xiaomi founder Lei Jun took the wrapper off the world’s first car from a smartphone company, car enthusiasts knew the source of the design inspiration: the Taycan from 93-year-old German carmaker Porsche.
Unveiled in December and launched in March, the Xiaomi SU7 has turned the world’s largest car market upside down. Xiaomi had orders for more than 88,000 cars at the end of April. Last month, the company increased its sales target for this year from 100,000 to 120,000 vehicles.
By comparison, Porsche saw a 24 percent year-on-year decline in the first quarter in China to 16,340 cars.
Xiaomi’s stunning debut has highlighted the rapid progress of China’s electric car industry from bygone perceptions of ugly, low-quality models to sleek, high-tech and affordable cars.
Lei Also in 2019, local startup Nio released its ET concept, which later became the group’s flagship luxury model, as another example of Chinese design progress.
“Styling, proportions and sportiness were unlike anything BYD had done before,” said Xing. “The same goes for the Nio ET.”
Since then, China’s EV industry has grown tremendously and the credibility of the local industry’s design has made tremendous progress. The International Energy Agency predicts that 10.1 million electric vehicles will be sold in China this year, compared to 3.4 million in Europe and 1.7 million in the US.
Tu Le, founder of the consulting firm Sino Auto Insights, pointed to Human Horizons’ HiPhi to stand out” .
At the other end of the spectrum, the Wuling Hongguang Mini EV, produced since 2020 by a joint venture of US General Motors and two Chinese state-owned carmakers, “sparked a huge trend” for microcars that can be accessorized.
Still, some experts said the Xiaomi SU7’s undeniable similarity to the Porsche design also put a spotlight on the industry’s long struggle to find its own identity.
Xiaomi’s first car “very clearly emulates” the Porsche Taycan, said Robert Dooley, a strategist at British consultancy Car Design Research. “From a design perspective, it’s a missed opportunity.”
In many areas of car design, including user experience, technology and interior design, some Chinese brands are “leading” their Western rivals, Dooley says, but many still struggle to emphasize “their unique qualities of being Chinese.”
“Although in some cases they are more technologically advanced, for the most part they are trying to emulate a Western brand,” he said. “What are our strengths? What does the market know us positively about? How do we achieve these things? . . . For me, that is a major challenge that is not being addressed.”
Companies are now hiring more local staff who better understand Chinese consumers. Xiaomi brought in Li Tianyuan, the first Chinese designer hired by BMW, to head its car design team in 2021, while Chinese employees make up 90 percent of Geely’s Shanghai-based design team.
The rise of the EV industry in the country is also enabling the integration of advanced driver assistance and entertainment systems into car designs faster than in the rest of the world.
“The infotainment systems of foreign brands may not be as good as those of Chinese EV makers,” said Guo, a 27-year-old car buyer in Beijing, who expressed a preference for a spacious interior and luxurious furnishings. Its favorite brands, Li Auto and Huawei-backed Aito, are known for their full-size SUV models equipped with huge screens in the cabin and seats with built-in massagers.
Chinese automakers are increasingly rethinking and redesigning interiors around the lifestyles of their local consumers. In many premium models, much more attention is paid to the layout of the so-called second row of seats, where most business people sit while being driven by private drivers.
You will see a snapshot of an interactive image. This is probably because you are offline or because JavaScript is disabled in your browser.
These efforts follow years of poaching top design talent from the West, including Kris Tomasson, a former Ford and BMW designer who joined Nio in 2015 when it was an ambitious startup founded by serial entrepreneur William Li.
Tomasson, whose industrial design credits range from the Gulfstream G650 business jet to a Coca-Cola bottle, said Li understood from the start that a “strong design DNA” would be critical to the company as it faces rivals with decades of experience challenged.
“The capabilities have grown here, the talent has grown here, the expertise has grown here. It’s just experience,” he said. “Now they have actually gone through the process of designing cars.”
Tomasson added that foreign rivals still underestimated the speed at which Chinese companies could move through the design process, “almost working from the gut” with fewer design iterations.
Stefan Sielaff, who spent 30 years at European carmakers such as Audi, Volkswagen and Bentley before joining Geely, said the “high demands” of China’s tech-savvy consumers had driven him to increasingly connect and autonomous cars with unprecedented develop speed.
“They are very energetic, open to technology and lead fast-paced lifestyles. . .[while]in other parts of the world people still think that’s what a car is [merely] an object that you drive from A to B,” he said.
Zeekr, the Geely brand that Sielaff helped launch, typically takes two years to bring a new model to market, which is shorter than half the development cycles at most established European automakers.
Sielaff attributed the pace to a “low hierarchy” at the company, which has helped it respond to recent changes in Chinese consumer tastes, with simplicity and understatement being new key words.
“[Western carmakers] have the advantage of a very good name and high value in the eyes of customers,” he said, “but when it comes to reinventing and disrupting themselves, this is also a burden. This is a burden we do not have.”
Additional reporting by Wenjie Ding in Beijing