I'm curious: Do Chinese cars have the stigma of being crap quality in other countries?
Here in Mexico most anecdotes of people buying Chinese cars are that after less than a year something broke and they had to take it to the repair shop, where it stayed for a very long time due to a lack of pieces even by the manufacturer.
There are a lot of them here in NZ. Definitely no reputation for being 'crap'. By all accounts they are quality vehicles. The local car share business has a large fleet.
I'm pretty confident that once the Seagull lands we will see a lot more. I expect it to be the modern equivalent of the late 90s - early 00s Hyundai Excel. That was an entry level car that blew everything else out of the water in Australia due to low prices coupled with a crazy long and generous warranty. It really set Hyundai up in a market as a legitimate mainstream brand.
What I find especially interesting is that at the same time the North American brands have hitched their wagon to the 'bloated vehicle' trend here. They seem to be relying almost entirely on SUVs, and 'trucks'. Recently they are pushing models like the F150 and Ram on the back of their success with big utes like the Ford Ranger. Personally I think this is just going to make them vulnerable to the incoming wave of more sensible Chinese options.
Edit:
It just occurred to me that the idea of car share business using popular North American vehicles seems kind of absurd. Who would want a fleet of oversized SUVs and trucks? I think this says something about the true utility of these vehicles.
It was explained to me that Americans buy SUVs because they feel safer in them than in, e.g., sedans.
I used to believe that this was the reason too. Now I think that this is just a convenient post-hoc explanation. People tell themselves this when the real truth is that they've been manipulated by a bald-faced marketing coup that appealed to some pretty base desires for self image.
They have had that reputation for a long time and it persists. Assuming companies like BYD do things correctly, they'll come from the bottom up and improve quality as they go while working to keep their volume position. Pretty much all the major automakers should be terrified, as China is likely to have two or three juggernaut auto companies, they'll be permanently cash loaded by their gigantic domestic market, and they'll be able to use that to forever assault foreign markets (it's the same thing US tech companies do, using the US as the springboard to conquer the world).
We'll see this pattern repeat with high tier engineering products going forward. Airbus and Boeing will be brutally mauled by China in a similar fashion, as nearly all domestic China planes switch over to being exclusively Chinese planes for nationalistic reasons (it'll cut Airbus and Boeing in half at a minimum). And China will use that scale and capability gain to conquer other markets like India et al.
Other countries, maybe. But China is never gonna conquer or do reasonable business in India for geopolitical reasons.
Not really US is trying to prop India as a counter to China but India is just using US it has no interests in having a bad relationship with China no matter how much the west would like to do that India is not interested. India is just going to use China as bogeyman for the west to get concessions and help from the west but in the end they will do what is best for them and that is not fighting China.
There are still no direct flights between China and India and visas are still basically impossible to get.
That's not even realistic. India is part of BRICS, and one of the main goals of this group is to increase trading between members. I agree part of Indian society doesn't like it, but it won't make any difference.
I'm sorry but that's a very naive take. That's like saying OPEC nations are always cooperative because they're part of the same economic organization.
OPEC has nothing to do with economic integration, it is just a group of countries setting oil prices. G7 countries deceive themselves if they think BRICS is just another OPEC. You should think of BRICS as a multilateral Belt and Road initiative.
In Peru a few years ago they had a mixed reputation but now they are mostly considered good value for money. It reminds me of Korean car reputations in the 1990s. Now you are as likely to buy a Hyundai or Kia as you are a Toyota, VW, or Chevy. Chinese cars are quickly entering a similar market position.
The old gas models, yes. The new EVs seems quite solid; though it'll take a few years to really find out.