Shanghai Auto Show 2023 Gallery
Officially called the 20th Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition, but known as Auto Shanghai, the scale of the event is hard to grasp: 320,000 square metres of exhibition space with more than 1,000 exhibitors and 150 press conferences showcasing more than 100 new cars.To get more news about shanghai newspaper, you can citynewsservice.cn official website.
With restrictions lifted in China, these companies are back en masse, desperate to reconnect with the world's biggest single car market. Polestar, BMW, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz are among those launching truly significant global models at the vast exhibition centre.
But Chinese companies are ready for them, especially with a huge range of battery electric vehicles. And you can forget any last vestiges of Chinese companies producing inferior or copycat cars: in terms of design, powertrain and build quality, the best Chinese models are absolutely on a par with their European counterparts; in terms of digital technology, they are often superior.
It helps, of course, that the Chinese government sees the move to electrification as an opportunity to both reduce its dependence on imported petrol and accelerate its domestic car industry. Which is a reminder that there are important issues to consider with China in areas such as government control, censorship, human rights, geopolitics and more.
But strictly from an automotive point of view, you have to be impressed. Walk through the stands of Chinese giants such as BYD or Geely, the start-up Nio, and you have to be impressed by the volume, scale and variety of cars they are now producing.
But in a show where more is more, the most distinctive and memorable stand was one with just two cars on display. Polestar chose to present the new 4 Coupé SUV face to face with the larger 3, on a pedestal surrounded by more than 80,000 live red tulips. It's an unforgettable, dramatic image that really builds on the Swedish brand's flair for bold visual design. It exemplifies Polestar's growth from a Volvo spin-off to an independent brand through the development of a clear and appealing identity.
Zeekr didn't have any previously unseen models to show, but used its press conference to announce its European launch. New regional boss Spiros Fotinos was bold enough to claim that the brand would become a "major player" within a decade. Bold talk, but it certainly has the resources to back it up.
While Zeekr operates in the premium Chinese EV space, perhaps the leading brand in the space - and the closest parallel to Polestar - is Nio, which has recently launched in Europe - and will arrive in the UK next year. While its European expansion has perhaps been slower than planned, Nio has really established itself as one of the top premium companies in China, and its customers - or users, as the company puts it - seem genuinely passionate about the brand.
