Cerise sur le gateau les voitures amĂ©ricaines vendues au rabais alimentent le business #VTC ou #ride_hailing qui est une machine dâexploitation radicale en Chine aussi. Le capitalisme Ă la fois nu et encadrĂ© y pousse les foules de pauvres Ă sâendetter auprĂšs des sociĂ©tĂ©s du type #Uber dans la poursuite du rĂȘve dâentrepreneur indĂ©pendant. Le rĂ©sultat est le mĂȘme sinon pire que ce que Ken Loach a montrĂ© dans Sorry We Missed You .
I plopped down in the front seat of the Buick Velite 6, the electric wagon I had seen everywhere in Shanghai. Iâd find out later from four different on-the-ground sources, including Sundin, that the Velite 6 is highly discounted and sold en masse to Chinese rideshare drivers.
It is a car that sells in numbers heavily to fleets because it is cheap and available, and less because it is desirableânot great for a brand that wants to retain its market share and raise its transaction prices.
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Some of the China-only cars I had read about and reported on before, I was finally seeing in person. âOh wow, thatâs a Buick Velite 6; Iâve been reading about those online, theyâre everywhere, here in China. Or at least, everywhere in the passenger pickup area,â I said out loud, to no one in particular. For a split second, I wondered: were the reports overblown? Was Chinaâs love affair with Western cars still strong?
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Iâd later learn that the auto show had more than 100 new model debuts and concepts. Thatâs a far cry from the Detroit Auto Show last September, which only featured one fully new model. Two other models were refreshed versions of current cars already on sale. None were electric.
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Whatever the flavor, these models are superconnected, full of high-end processors and tech meant to woo discerning Chinese buyers.
Just from what I saw, I understood why there were so many people at the Chinese domestic brands. Li Autoâs booth had a consistent queue to view L6 compact PHEV crossover, released at the show.
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Nobody Cares About Western Brands in China
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The first stand I stumbled upon was Buickâs. It unveiled two GM Ultium-based concepts, the Electra L and Electra LT. It had also unveiled a PHEV version of its popular GL8 van. But where the hell was everyone? It was barely 10 a.m., on the first day of the Beijing Auto show; two concepts were just revealed sometime earlier that morning, yet there were only a handful of spectators at the Buick stand.
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âChinese people donât really care about concepts here,â Will Sundin of the China Driven internet show told me. âThey want something they can buy and drive right away.â
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Why isnât the Equinox EV on sale?
We explored the expo center more, but eventually made our way back to the Buick stand. I plopped down in the front seat of the Buick Velite 6, the electric wagon I had seen everywhere in Shanghai. Iâd find out later from four different on-the-ground sources, including Sundin, that the Velite 6 is highly discounted and sold en masse to Chinese rideshare drivers.
It is a car that sells in numbers heavily to fleets because it is cheap and available, and less because it is desirableânot great for a brand that wants to retain its market share and raise its transaction prices.
Within five seconds of sitting behind the wheel of the Velite 6, I understood why. Sundin picked up on my disappointment.
âItâs a bit shit, innit?â he said. He was right. I couldnât ignore what I was seeing. The Velite 6 felt like an electric version of a generation-old Chevy Malibu.
The delta of quality, connectedness, and value between the Velite 6 and any of the equivalent of the mid-tier Chinese EV vehicles I had experienced that day, was startling. By comparison, the Velite 6âs small screens and grey plastic interior were downright depressing to the full-width, super brilliant screens in any given Chinese EV.
