Chinese car companies are doing luxury brands, usually in the EV space. There’s also a distinct lack of need for a foreign JV partner—a sign of things to come, says Jack Yan
I noted in the new Autocade Year of Cars that the French faltered in China because the Chinese marques no longer need them, especially when they are churning out superior product. They have no use for French cachet, especially as the brands edge upmarket.
You’ve got the HIMA collective from Huawei, all with luxury marques, including the newly launched Maextro S800 from JAC—this is a confident big saloon selling in the million-plus yuan space. And there’s another very interesting stat, because this rejection of foreign marques isn’t limited to the French.
Mazda’s EZ-6, based on the Deepal (née Shenlan) SL03 had a reasonably strong start in China. It did everything right. It improved on the SL03, because if there’s one thing Mazda does well, it’s chassis tuning. It looks way better than the Deepal, in my opinion. Mazda kept the price low. And by the end of 2024, interest in the EZ-6 dropped significantly.
Buyers just don’t need joint-venture brands in China any more. Deepal is doing great, passing the 400,000 mark in units made. It’s the first state-owned new-energy marque to post a profit. Even though Mazda has been in China for ages, and it provided the base for models at Haima for years, Chinese buyers are getting drawn to Deepal and domestic marques a lot more. The tide has turned. And they’re confident enough to export these marques abroad, as they have gradually been doing. What a lot of us outside China see is the tip of the iceberg, the smaller models that they think can take the lower end of the export markets. The reality is China is churning out luxury cars, too—they’ve long known how, and it’s not just Hongqi, but JV brands like Cadillac—and sooner or later, export customers will flock to them as they did with Lexus and Genesis.
Why is Mazda now announcing the 6e, the export name for the EZ-6, all of a sudden? They have to make a buck on their investment, and if Chinese sales aren’t cutting it, export ones better make up for it.
Mazda hinted that the EZ-6 would be exported, but I bet it’s been moved up the timetable.
The Germans have themselves a pretty healthy niche in China with how they’ve marketed themselves, but the domestic brands are getting stronger by the day. It’s not hard to foresee a market there that’s pretty much Chinese and German marque-dominated, with the Japanese in third place, and everyone else battling over what’s remaining. •
Jack Yan is founder and publisher of Autocade. This article was previously published in Lucire.