Why Chinese cars have caught up: 5 facts

Not long ago a Chinese car was chosen mainly for its price. Today buyers compare them with European and Japanese cars on technology, equipment and range. That is no accident: there are several quite specific reasons behind it. We picked five of them and checked each against the cars in our catalog.

1. Batteries and motors made in-house

China’s largest carmakers build key components themselves or source them from companies in the same country. BYD makes its own Blade batteries, electric motors and electronics. Avatr uses CATL batteries and Huawei electronics. When the battery — the most expensive part of an electric car — is made near the assembly plant, the car costs less and new versions arrive faster.

2. Shared platforms

Groups build dozens of models on a few shared architectures. Geely uses the CMA platform for the Monjaro and the Lynk & Co 08, and the SEA architecture for the whole Zeekr range. A shared base lowers development costs and lets new bodies and versions appear quickly without starting from scratch each time.

3. A choice of powertrains

Chinese brands do not bet everything on one type of engine. Our catalog has every option:

This means you can choose a car to suit your roads: an electric car for a city with chargers, an EREV for long trips, a body-on-frame hybrid for off-road driving.

A good example is the Tank 300 Hi4-T. It is a body-on-frame off-roader in which a two-litre turbo engine works together with an electric motor: 300 kW of system power, 750 Nm of torque and about 105 km on electricity alone. That combination — a ladder frame, locking differentials and a plug-in hybrid — was almost unheard of on the market until recently.

4. Fast charging

Seven cars in our catalog take 200 kW or more at a fast charger. Zeekr, on the 800-volt SEA architecture, charges from 10 to 80% in 11 minutes on a 480 kW station, and the Li MEGA accepts up to 500 kW. Even if you have no such stations yet, headroom in charging power makes a car less dependent on infrastructure in future.

5. Rich equipment

What used to be an option on expensive cars is often standard on Chinese models. In our catalog:

• surround-view cameras — on 33 cars out of 34;
• adaptive cruise control — on 28;
• a heat pump — on 19, which matters especially in winter;
• a head-up display — on 14.

For a buyer in Kazakhstan, Russia or Central Asia, all this means a choice that did not exist before. Still, it pays to choose carefully: check how a car copes with winter, whether parts are available and how servicing works. We help with parts — we have a catalog of genuine parts with VIN search.