Foreign automakers, meanwhile, are increasingly collaborating with local companies to keep pace with technological advances.
BMW has partnered with Chinese battery maker CATL, while Audi is using Huawei’s driving assistance systems and Volkswagen is developing EVs together with Guangzhou-based Xpeng.
FIERCE COMPETITION
This year, companies will also jostle to sell space, analysts say, with roomy SUVs’ new growth area targeting customers prioritising seating and comfort.
China “has become a customer retention and replacement/upgrade-driven market, and these big SUVs address that need,” independent analyst Lei Xing wrote in a blog this week.
Firms have flooded the domestic market in recent years with trade-in schemes, offering huge discounts to customers to give up their old auto for a new one.
