ED’S LETTER

It seems like just yesterday when I attended my first international motor show. "Yesterday", in this case, was the 2007 Frankfurt Motor Show, which was the world's largest and most significant motor show back then.

Officially called the "Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung Frankfurt", the IAA has seen many transformations in the last two decades, with "Dieselgate" from 2015, and many more external factors negatively affecting its success to the point where it almost disappeared, and is no longer held in Frankfurt.

While still a significant showcase for the German and greater European motoring community, its significance as a global platform for innovation has been superseded by the Shanghai Automobile Expo and, most recently, the Beijing Auto Show, from where I write this missive.

You can appreciate its significance only once you have experienced the Chinese automobile industry in action. Selling as much as five times the number of cars a week as South Africa does in a year, the Chinese motor trade is a behemoth that cannot be stopped, and it shows in the rate at which development and technological advancement are happening in China at the moment.

Where Europe remains the leader in terms of production process, design, and craftsmanship, Chinese cars are steadily beginning to outpace their European rivals in these, and many other respects, and Chinese carmakers are redeploying the many billions of Yuan they generate to produce even more, even faster, and even better.

Having again seen what Chinese automakers are working on at the Beijing Auto Show 2024, it seems inevitable that the next few decades of automobile dominance belong to China. European, Korean, and Japanese brands, beware: there is a rising tide from the East, and it's coming for your market share.