Auto China review: more is more now = less later?

Barrelling down the freeway towards the 2026 edition of Beijing Auto China – as a passenger in a cocooning German MPV – I suddenly got a flashback to a similar commute many moons ago. The thick pollution which made me fail to see the sun for four days back in 2012 has thankfully eased. 

The myriad EV brands surrounding us in our 2026 Beijing traffic jam confirm the powertrain emissions improvement. But the congestion is almost as bad. Nose-to-bumper traffic, erratic changes of lane and alternate brake-slamming and accelerator stamping from other drivers contributed to an unpleasant journey.

The gridlock was notable for other reasons too: the relative lack of Western cars. From our hour-long-plus hotel-to-exhibition centre journey there were just a handful of Teslas and Buicks, a tiny smattering of VWs and Range Rovers and a Chinese Audi Q8 driver who seemed to consider every spare inch of road an invitation to repeatedly lurch between lanes back before eventually steaming down the ‘free’ hard shoulder for simplicity. 

There were a few Japanese cars too – a Toyota Avalon or Camry here and an Alphard still looking cool there – plus a few Koreans but the vast majority of cars vying for road space on 2026’s Beijing highways are now Chinese. Enter Aito, Arcfox, BYD, Chery, Changan, Denza, Geely, Luxeed, Nio, SAIC, Trumpchi, Voyah, Xiaomi and Zeekr – and a tonne of brown Beijing taxis.

Aside from the latter old-school sedans, the build quality now looks strong, anecdotally the local tech and software is excellent and the designs coherent – if still derivative of Western ones – with endless large-grille MPVs often with the number 9 in the model name. Then there are Mercedes G-Wagen wannabes, Tesla and Porsche Taycan try-hards and others that even a vehicle full of experienced car journalists could not confidently identify. “What’s that?” “A Maple?” “Who makes that car?” “I dunno”. Later research suggests it’s a defunct brand now merely a model within the Livan range (with 50% Geely Group ownership).

A reported 180 press conferences on the Friday 24th April press day featured 71 concept cars

The commute to the expo was very much a mirror for what lay in wait inside. There, 17 exhibition halls covering 380,000 sq m were mainly choc-full of new cars. According to Auto China’s PR, this is a world record size for a car show and visually at least, it makes the sprawling old Frankfurt event seem like a modest affair. A reported 180 press conferences on the Friday 24th April press day featured 71 concept cars. Walking the halls and encountering so many brands you’d never heard of – Epicland anyone? – was bewildering and discombobulating.

But what really stood out? The aero wedge Hyundai Ioniq V production car – closely related to the Hyundai Venus concept revealed just weeks earlier – was one example, as a statement of renewed and differentiated intent for a market where the South Korean brand’s sales had recently stalled. As CEO Jose Munoz declared: “China is our greatest opportunity for growth and if you want to be globally competitive you have to be competitive in China.”

There were a handful of convincingly futuristic people mover concepts too, from the sea green MPV-meets-SUV BYD Ocean-V and autonomous bubble-back Buick Electra Zenith with painted windows matching the body colour for pleasing visual consistency and privacy. 

And the Geely Eva Cab robotaxi replete with a seemingly ready-to-drive humanoid robot on standby. Robots were everywhere at Beijing Auto China as a visual metaphor for China’s very real tech advances – including the recent E-Town Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon red-chested champ “Lighting” – developed by smartphone company Honor – seen scuttling through the halls on press day (see video).

Then there was the serious Nürburgring-conquering gull-winged Yangwang U9 Xtreme “Dawn edition” supercar, juxtaposed against the daft but Insta-gold My Little Pony x BYD pink shag-pile carpet-clad-mobile across the aisle. And the BYD 06GT special edition with huge gold fangs biting through its own front air intakes with outboard Chinese clouds at each front wheel arch.

And more Mercedes G-Wagen, Land Rover Defender and Jeep Wrangler-inspired rugged 4x4s. Among this Chinese throng, most of the Western brands looked somewhat forlorn and meek on mainly smaller stands with fewer cars – except for Mercedes’ grandstand heavily populated by its heritage fleet, which unfortunately looked way better than its current range. 

There was a welcome sight on the Smart stand with its #2 concept, heralding the return of its original two-seater format (and set to unveil as a 2026 EV production car this autumn at the Paris show). But the inexplicably off-brand Smart #6 compact sports sedan alongside – and elsewhere on the stand shown in yellow with black go-faster stripes – looked like a massive misstep.

Head-scratching over the speed and number of new Chinese model and brand entrants continued

Then there was the schizophrenic Audi stand featuring two ranges of cars: one set featuring the traditional famous four rings and another line-up with only four letters on their fronts. Of the two, the ‘ALL CAPS AUDI’ range – newly designed for China to attract younger more tech-savvy customers – actually felt the more modern inside and out.

Head-fried from trawling the show in the day, I decamped to the calm of the Car Design Dialogues Beijing event at the Four Seasons hotel in the evening. During several very honest conversations with Western car designers now working in China (or who had recently done so), the head-scratching over the speed and number of new Chinese model and brand entrants continued. 

One well-regarded head of design likened the current Chinese automotive approach to machine-gunning ideas – and whole new brands – at a wall in the hope that some would stick, while framing his brand’s (slower and less numerous) model strategy within the same analogy as a sniper, quipping along the lines of, “I might miss occasionally, but at least I focus.”

Another designer recounted tales of colleagues being asked to be “inspired” by senior Chinese management showing them pictures of current top selling cars from rival brands. 

To which they made an interpretation which was then rebuffed by that same management for not being close enough to the original “inspiration.” The number of very similar typologies from myriad different brands on show at this year’s Beijing expo suggests that this anecdote is not an exception. These cars are no longer exact copycats, but they are rarely original.

Meanwhile, in a slowing Chinese domestic market with still unfulfilled high manufacturing capacity, Chinese brands are seeking to export in huge numbers to markets where the tariffs are manageable or non-existent, especially targeting mainstream segments where price sensitivity is high and brand loyalty low. 

The upshot is seriously hurting sales of so-called legacy brands to such an extent that many are seeking to sell spare production capacity to Chinese newcomers. Only this month Ford started talks with Geely on taking over part of its Spanish plant and Nissan is closing a production line (and shredding 900 jobs) in its formerly busy Sunderland, UK facility.

As BYD’s CEO Wang Chuan-Fu has been quoted, the global auto industry has now entered the “brutal knockout stage”. As the sales bunfight ensues, surely not all brands can survive. What all this seems to mean in the short term for designers trying to define and differentiate so many old and new models and brands, is even more hard work, and headache at high speed. 

Of course, this is just one Western opinion looking in from the outside at the Chinese market on a short trip. But within the current maelstrom, it’s never been more important to be bold, as design mediocrity will not suffice for long. “More is more” might be the unofficial Beijing Auto China mantra in 2026 but it’s not sustainable in the longer term and looks like leading to “less” – in every sense – sooner than you might think.