China’s EVs Raced Ahead. Now It’s About Continuous Improvement

Believe it or not, there were rumblings that the Shanghai Auto Show this year was “quieter” than last year’s Beijing Auto Show.

That was hard to tell with the gaggle of executives, journalists and influencers buzzing around the show’s concrete venue, including the glut of coverage from Western media folks who were likely (and rightfully) overwhelmed by the incredible amount of choice we don’t have in the West.

But it was true. Lots of automakers weren’t there. No Korean brands, no French brands, and no Tesla. Others that were front and center at last year’s Beijing show, with flashy self-driving cars and big announcements for new markets, died before they could make it into 2025.

Photo by: Patrick George

Shanghai International Auto Show 2025 Live Photos

Ji Yue is completely dead, while Neta has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Xiaomi may have dominated the show last year with the SU7 sedan, but its anticipated Ferrari-esque SUV follow-up didn’t come to this one, despite the exterior being already revealed and Xiaomi itself testing the car in camouflage around the greater Shanghai area.

Some China pundits and analysts insist that this is a natural consequence of consolidation and that time for these brands to pay the piper in terms of profitability. The money won’t be around forever, and venture capital or state entities won’t continue to pour money into ventures that have no chance of being solvent. Yes, that’s true.

But that feels like an incomplete read of what has happened at the show. 

Photo by: Photo by Kevin Williams/InsideEVs

Xiaomi YU7 Spy Shot In Shanghai

China 2025: Evolution, Not Revolution (Or At Least, Less Of That)

China’s auto industry may have had its explosive big bang during COVID, but it’s clear to me that now it’s shifting to refinement and slower, more methodical updates to existing products rather than total, explosive development of new models all the time.

Photo by: Patrick George

Shanghai International Auto Show 2025 Live Photos

Everyone wants to be the belle of the ball, no one wants to get left behind, but I think this year’s show asked a few new questions. Is there room for big, huge investments in vehicle architectures, and oversaturation in every market segment by every brand? Maybe not.

This year was that of every brand getting their ducks in a row—refinement by some big brands, and catching up, especially from non-Chinese brands, a couple of which said they aren’t down for the count. 

And what it means for the rest of the world is that the Chinese auto industry is getting smarter, working toward stabilization, and growing tactical about what’s next. It’s not going anywhere, and it’s certainly not bottoming out. It’s now truly settling in for the long haul.

Shanghai wasn’t so balmy this time. I knew it was going to be hot; the first time I came to China last year, I flew into Shanghai first, and the weather was crushing. “It was like walking into lukewarm soup,” I texted a friend back in 2024.

Photo by: Patrick George

Shanghai International Auto Show 2025 Live Photos

This year it though, it wasn’t so bad. Perhaps the car gods smiled down on us, blessing us with 70-degree weather and relatively low humidity. That was kind of them, since the Shanghai Auto Show is an indoor-outdoor exhibition expo that was as big as the downtown square of my city of Columbus, Ohio. I think only CES’s scale came close to this, and that was certainly not filled to the brim. Minus, of course, the American predilection for air-conditioning the hell out of every space we’re in.

Photo by: Patrick George

Shanghai International Auto Show 2025 Live Photos

The weather was so temperate that I didn’t find too much trouble walking around from almost every stand in the convention center. After the shock and awe wore off from seeing so many new nameplates I’ve written about for years, but in person, I took an objective look at what was going on here. For China, which has historically moved at lightspeed with constant upgrades and new models, there weren’t all that many this year. One of the few exceptions was Chery’s 16-model onslaught, but arguably plays right into my thesis here. Chery’s reputation is that of being a not-so-good provider of meh EVs and ICE cars. For a long time, the state-owned company sold more cars outside China than in.

This year, though, its onslaught of new cars felt like it was finally catching up to where the other Chinese automakers were. It's Beijing military Jeep-inspired iCar V23 was constantly swarmed by the press, for good reason, too. The quality and design were strong, appearing as a mini G-wagen with People’s Liberation Army flair, and the electric SUV was charming. Think China’s take on the Ford Bronco, with the same level of nostalgia, and you’re there. Quality was tight; it finally felt like Chery’s efforts were on par with the rest of China.

Photo by: Kevin Williams/InsideEVs

Even BYD’s offerings felt a little more refined this year. In 2022, I drove an Atto 3 (Yuan Plus) at that year’s Paris Auto Show. I was pleasantly surprised at how decent the car was, but I admit that I came in with very few expectations.

The Atto 3’s software felt ugly and gimmicky, complete with a shaky rotating screen that may look cool to the 13-year-olds who watch YouTube Shorts, but the feature adds no utility to the infotainment experience. I felt the same after some seat time in a Japanese-market Dolphin and Seal last October. I went out of my way to experience it at a BYD dealership while I was in Japan to test the Honda 0 Series prototype. 

 

Like my time in Paris with the Atto 3, the cars were impressive but still lacking a little finishing polish in ways that traditional OEMs had already mastered. BYD had made huge strides, true, but to me, some of the praise on the brand’s perception of quality that some have insinuated the cars have was overblown in my eyes.

Photo by: Patrick George

Shanghai International Auto Show 2025 Live Photos

Photo by: Patrick George

Shanghai International Auto Show 2025 Live Photos

Photo by: Patrick George

Shanghai International Auto Show 2025 Live Photos

This year was different, though. In the midst of BYD’s almost Walmart-like price war, it found the time to do updates on most of its volume models. 

Rather than starting over with a new car, like some brands would have done five years ago, it felt like the brand took to heart some of the critiques it likely got in its home and foreign markets.. In the Dolphin and Seal, the ugly software was replaced by something that had some real thought behind its UX and UI design. The gimmicky rotating screen may have been cut in the Dolphin, but the new screen that replaced it felt higher resolution and more responsive.

The lower half of the dashboard lost its daily pill bottle-shaped gear selector and soap-dish wireless charger; it’s less interesting this time around, which is a little disappointing. More importantly, all of the interior plastics, switches, and the new BYD corporate gear selector used on most of its models now fit far better than before.

There were no squeaks or rattles or weird flexes; it felt like a better, more mature car. Of course, it now has BYD’s “God’s Eye” DiPilot driver assistance features, complete with Deepseek AI. 

Photo by: BYD

Of course, some could read this as the Chinese market running out of steam. After all, this market is known for moving so quickly that traditional car manufacturers have openly complained about how they are unable to keep up. Then again, BYD just cracked the code on five-minute fast-charging, and the rest of China’s industry is racing to beat it, although some outside of China may not see the utility.

Regardless,  I think it’s more reflective of a shift in priorities.

Photo by: Patrick George

Shanghai International Auto Show 2025 Live Photos

True, Chinese car brands aren’t throwing the baby out with the bathwater whenever a new EV or EREV rolls onto the market a little underbaked.  Now, these brands are a little more calculated when it comes to tailoring their cars for the market. For example, Zeekr showed off its range-topping EREV, the 9X, but it was a static model with no visible interior.

Similarly, Nio’s budget-minded Onvo brand debuted the L90 three-row EV crossover, but focused on its class-leading frunk; no interior shown off just yet. Chery revived the QQ mini hatchback as a sort of techno-futuristic minicar, but it’s still a concept. It just feels like the days of developing a car, introducing a car, and killing it just as fast as it got here might be on their way out. These brands are spending big money on very complicated, very advanced pieces of tech. They have to be right.

Photo by: Patrick George

McKinsey’s China Auto Consumer Insights 2024 had some interesting thoughts to say last year concerning the maturation of the Chinese market.

“The Chinese smart-EV industry has scored remarkable progress in both technology and user experience,” the survey said. “However, price competition and the resulting low (even negative) margins are plaguing almost all participants and have sparked a debate on whether this strategy is worthwhile.” 

The survey explained that as the Chinese market has matured, the brands there are focused on meeting the needs and desires of the local consumers is key to success in China, both by Chinese brands and foreign ones.

Photo by: Patrick George

And to be fair, it looks like some non-Chinese brands are starting to figure it out. GM’s new Xiao Yao platform—what’s underneath that hot-looking Electra—may be in concept form still, but its “EREV or BEV under one roof strategy” looks to be better catered to the demands of China’s market. Now, GM won’t be locked into the big and bulky Ultium platform there, which is good, because the handful of models on sale in China haven’t really set sales charts ablaze.

Nissan’s N7 sedan seems to borrow right out of the BYD or Leapmotor playbook, with a well-finished big EV sedan for not a whole lot of money; initial success for this model has been strong in China. Mazda’s EZ-60 attracted lots of crowds at the show. So did the two Nissans.

Photo by: Patrick George

Shanghai International Auto Show 2025 Live Photos

But the McKinsey study also cautioned that although overall evolution is the way forward in China’s car industry, there will be pain in the future as brands figure out how to properly allocate resources. With that many cars, brands and companies competing for buyers and the world’s second-biggest car market circling the wagons to prevent exports, China’s carmakers are still in for brutal internal competition.

Moving more methodically, improving existing models, things that at their core are kind of the fundamentals of traditional car building, will be the way to stay alive in the future. 

Contact the author: Kevin.Williams@InsideEVs.com