What's More Terrifying Than Sales Collapse: The Soul of Japanese Cars Is Being "Sinicized"

"In the past, selling Toyotas, the first thing customers would say upon entering was: When can I pick up the car? Now the first thing is: Whose intelligent driving system does this car use?" This is what a Toyota 4S shop salesperson told me recently.

He entered the industry in 2018. At that time, the Camry had price markups, people queued for the Highlander, and the Alphard was like a financial product. The hardest part of selling Japanese cars was not selling the cars, but calming the customers' emotions.

But now, the one thing he does most every day is explain: 'Our cars actually use a lot of Chinese supply chains.' When he said this, his tone even sounded a bit proud.

Indeed, ten years ago, Chinese automakers were still figuring out how to make door gaps even; five years ago, Chinese new energy vehicles were completely overshadowed by the industry; and now, if Japanese cars want to do new energy well, the first thing has become: Connect to the Chinese supply chain first.

You will find that when an era truly ends, it is often not because someone fell.

Instead, people who were once high and mighty start to actively learn from you.

Recently, sales of Toyota's pure electric SUV broke ten thousand again. Many people interpret this as a 'Japanese counterattack'. But if you take this car apart to look, you will find things are not that simple.

Momenta Intelligent Driving, Hesai LiDAR, Desay SV Domain Control, FinDream Battery, CALB, Zhengli New Energy...

To put it bluntly, many so-called 'Japanese new energy vehicles' now look more and more like 'Japanese shells assembled by the Chinese supply chain'. But the issue is, this precisely shows that China's automotive industry has truly won. Because true industrial victory is never about crushing others, but even your rivals are forced to use you.

This is actually more terrifying than sales overtaking.

In the past, everyone always said Chinese automakers were 'overtaking on a curve'. Looking back now, this statement was actually too conservative. China's automotive industry isn't about overtaking at all; it's about changing the track entirely.

In the internal combustion engine era, why was the Japanese supply chain strong? Because that era competed on precision manufacturing, stable quality control, long-cycle iteration, and a closed supply system. To put it simply, it was 'slow work yields fine results'. Toyota's system was essentially the highest level of order in the industrial era.

The problem is, the new energy era is different.

Now it competes on iteration speed, software capability, cost control, supply chain collaboration, and large-scale rapid trial and error. In the past, a car model was replaced every five years; now there is an OTA update every half year; in the past, suppliers took three months to change a mold; now Chinese manufacturers take three weeks.

In the past, the strongest point of Japanese manufacturing was 'not making mistakes'. Now the strongest point of Chinese manufacturing is allowing rapid mistakes, then rapid evolution. These are two completely different industrial philosophies. So many people actually misunderstand Chinese new energy vehicles. Everyone always thinks Chinese automakers win because they are cheap. But what is truly terrifying is never the low price. It is that China now possesses 'cheap', 'good enough', and 'fast' all at once.

This is the most scary part. Because the most unsolvable thing in the industrial world is that you are cheaper than me and iterate faster than me. This is also why, today, more and more Japanese suppliers are starting to collapse. Many people see Japanese parts companies going bankrupt and think it is just a sales issue.

Actually, it's not. The real problem is that the industrial logic upon which the entire Japanese supply chain relies is starting to fail. In the past, the biggest moat for Japanese suppliers was the Keiretsu system. Toyota only used the Toyota system; Honda only supported the Honda supply chain. Denso, Aisin, Jtekt, Yazaki... the whole system was like a closed empire.

But in the new energy era, there is a particularly cruel thing: closed systems mean slow. And being slow is almost a mortal sin today.

So you will see a particularly absurd phenomenon. In the past, Chinese suppliers desperately wanted to get into the Japanese system; now Japanese automakers are coming to Chinese suppliers. Because without using the Chinese supply chain, cars simply cannot compete.

This is particularly obvious in Southeast Asia. Two years ago, many people were still discussing: 'Will Chinese cars fight fiercely with Japanese cars in Thailand?' But now it is found that it is not a 'head-to-head match'. Instead, the Chinese supply chain directly penetrated into Japanese car factories.

This is more ruthless than grabbing the market. Because grabbing the market is just grabbing sales. Grabbing the supply chain is equivalent to grabbing the industrial lifeline. In the past, one of the scariest points of Japanese manufacturing was that it controlled the Asian industrial system. Now this control is shifting. And it is shifting very quickly.

The most interesting thing is that the Japanese themselves actually realized the problem first. The Nikkei has started to frequently use words like 'Keiretsu Dissolution'. Translated, it is actually just one sentence: The core thing of the Japanese automotive industry is collapsing.

So today the most painful are no longer Japanese brands, but that group of Japanese suppliers. Because vehicle manufacturers can at least 'surrender'. The supply chain is not that easy to turn around.

Toyota can still use Chinese intelligent driving; Nissan can still accept Chinese batteries; Honda can still learn new EV brands to do cockpits. But what about those traditional suppliers?

All advantages established in the internal combustion engine era suddenly became useless. More cruelly, the most important things in the new energy era, batteries, intelligence, software, intelligent driving, China has almost occupied all of them.

So you will see a particularly darkly humorous picture. On one side, Japanese media are heartbroken over 'Japanese car soul handed over to China'; on the other side, Japanese suppliers are taking BYD orders again to stay alive. This is actually very much like dynastic transitions in history.

People of the old era will not disappear suddenly. They will first be shocked, then deny, then angry, and finally join.

Many people still think China's automotive industry is just 'new energy leading'. But I think the real change is far more than cars. Cars are just the most obvious open exam for China's manufacturing upgrade. Because cars are the crown of industry. Behind it are connected chips, materials, software, batteries, machinery, manufacturing, AI, automation, and supply chain collaboration.

Whoever wins the car has the qualification to reconstruct the next generation industrial order. And what is truly terrifying about China today is that a 'supply chain black hole effect' is starting to appear.

What is a black hole? It means all industries will eventually be sucked into it.

You make cars, you have to connect to Chinese batteries; you do intelligent driving, you have to connect to Chinese computing power; you do supply chains, you have to accept Chinese speed; you do manufacturing, you have to adapt to Chinese costs.

It is highly likely that a very realistic situation will appear in the future. Manufacturing industries that do not join the Chinese supply chain will find it harder and harder to stay at the table. This is not some nationalistic emotion. This is industrial law.

Because at the end of manufacturing development, it is no longer about single-point technology, but about who can compress the entire supply chain into 'one machine'.

And the strongest ability China has now is this. From batteries to intelligent driving, from parts to whole vehicles, from R&D to mass production, China's industry has truly formed a complete closed loop, super-large scale, super-high-speed iteration, and super-strong cost control for the first time.

This thing is what is truly making the whole world anxious today. So look back at those news of 'Japanese cars using Chinese supply chains'.

You will find that its true meaning is not 'Chinese parts entered the Japanese system'. It is that Chinese manufacturing has begun to become the global industrial system itself for the first time.