Chinese Automakers Can Develop And Build A New Car In Only Two Years - But Is That A Good Thing?
Posted on 2/27/2026 by Agent009
We hear a lot about the speed at which Chinese brands can develop a brand new car, but I’m not convinced that universally this is a positive development. Granted, I’m making a vast generalisation across a range of deep, and now multi-talented, car makers. However, if we ignore individual brands and instead focus on the priorities that all manufacturers (hopefully) share, shouldn’t we be concerned that the ability to design, develop and test a new car so quickly simply results in a half-baked product?
There are a few reasons why the various Chinese brands can develop cars so much more quickly than the seven-year norm of European makers. For a start, there’s the much larger skilled R&D workforce, while their advanced electronic architectures streamline development by being relatively easy to to update.