Say Goodbye to the "Quick-Made Car" Label, Chinese Cars Can Truly Go Global Unburdened

On October 10, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Ecology and Environment, and State Administration for Market Regulation jointly issued the "Notice on Further Strengthening the Management of Innovative Design, R&D, and Testing Verification of Automobile Products (Draft for Comments)".

The next day, People's Daily Client published an opinion piece titled "Four Departments Join Hands, Say No to 'Quick-Made Cars'!", clearly pointing out the direction of the document.

Almost at the same time, the Maextro V800 brake pedal bracket breakage incident continued to ferment in the public opinion field, and the authoritative investigation conclusion has not yet been released. However, the discussion has already settled on a basic consensus: Brake system related components should never fail during normal vehicle operation. Whether the vehicle involved has defects still depends on the answer from an authoritative investigation.

This brake from domestic regulation is easily read as only concerning domestic consumer rights. However, looking at the node where Chinese car exports are moving towards the tens of millions of units scale, it has another meaning: Chinese cars cannot carry the "Quick-Made" baggage to knock on the door of the global market. We hope overseas users finally remember "Value for Money", not just "Cheap".

30,000 km plus "Two Winters and One Summer", establishing the universal trust threshold of the global market

The benchmark of this draft for comments is quite specific. In R&D testing verification, it proposes requiring new declared products to complete reliability and durability, structural reliability, software function reliability, and environmental adaptability tests. Among them, the reliability verification test mileage shall not be less than 30,000 km, the environmental adaptability verification period shall not be less than 1 year, and must include "Two Winters and One Summer".

In innovative design, it draws multiple red lines: it proposes prohibiting fully hidden door handles, forbids using folding screens or flexible screens, "zero-gravity" seats, rotating seats, or folding seats into beds shall not be used during driving. Emergency escape, emergency braking, and other manipulation parts involving safety must retain physical buttons and conspicuous markings. The document proposes adding 51 main vehicle product technical parameters.

The timeline is also clear: According to the draft for comments, starting January 1, 2027, new products that fail to complete testing verification as required or provide false materials will not be announced, meaning they cannot enter the production access list or go on sale for consumption; products that have obtained the announcement must submit materials for reporting before July 1, 2027. If overdue and safety hazards exist, production will be stopped and recalls will be implemented.

The change in regulatory logic is more noteworthy than the provisions themselves: shifting from the past "meeting national standards is enough" to "sufficient R&D verification before access". Regulation no longer only looks at whether submitted samples pass the line, but asks whether enterprises have actually finished their homework before mass production.

These requirements are not "high standards" unique to the Chinese market; rather, they are the most basic trust language of a mature automotive market for a vehicle. High temperature, high cold, high altitude calibration, and complete road tests are the global development rhythm already passed in the fuel vehicle era. Professor Zhu Xichan of the School of Automotive and Energy at Tongji University gave reference in an interview with People's Daily Client: Whole vehicle road testing for new models usually requires Two Winters and Two Summers; even for facelifts, one Winter and one Summer, and 30,000 km of real road testing are indispensable. The draft for comments sets the access lower limit at "Two Winters and One Summer", and the space left between this and the higher rhythm followed by enterprises for sufficient verification is precisely the space for enterprises to add layers themselves.

From this perspective, this document is not adding burdens to enterprises, but allowing them to complete a qualification match for the global arena in the domestic market first. Cui Dongshu, head of the China Association of Automobile Distributors Passenger Car Division, compares the reliability mileage standard to a "coming of age ceremony" for new energy vehicles, believing the industry is shifting from "cultivation priority" to "norm priority". The meaning of adulthood is that one cannot use children's standards to demand oneself.

"Quick-Made" can rely on iteration repairs domestically, overseas margin for error narrows significantly

The "Quick-Made Car" controversy appeared concentrated this year, with fertile soil. According to sorting by 21st Century Business Herald, in the fuel vehicle era, the development cycle of a new model was generally more than 36 months, with some as long as 40 to 60 months; after entering the new energy era, the industry average cycle was compressed to 28 to 39 months first, further compressed to about 24 months in 2026, and some new power brands even approached 12 to 18 months. Data from BitAuto shows that in the first half of 2026, there were as many as 576 new car models launched domestically. Great Wall Motor founder Wei Jianjun therefore sighed, on average there are two to three press conferences every day.

The tactics of "fast iteration, price for volume, and post-processing with OTA (remote online upgrade)" can operate domestically because domestic user tolerance for new brands is higher, replacement cycles are short, and lower purchase costs partially offset residual value (i.e., used car value retention) anxiety. However, after going overseas, this margin for error mechanism will narrow significantly.

The scrutiny method of the overseas market is completely different: When a car has centralized quality problems, what is remembered is often not a specific brand, but the "Chinese Cars" overall label. With the rapid increase of Chinese cars in overseas holdings, some markets have already begun discussions on Chinese car quality, after-sales, and used car residual value. According to media reports, at the end of last year, a Chinese brand significantly cut prices in the Thai market, with some models seeing price reductions of up to 38%; early this year, similar price competition appeared in the UK. The German business head of Arval, a leasing enterprise under BNP Paribas France, directly told Huxiu in an interview that the residual value gap between Chinese new energy vehicles and European competitive products is essentially a trust gap. Leasing fleet vehicles have high usage intensity, flowing into the used car market in batches after two or three years. Once residual value is suppressed, it hurts all Chinese brands entering this market later.

This is the risk after scaling up. Data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) shows that in the first half of 2026, five Chinese car enterprises—BYD, SAIC, Chery, Geely, and Leapmotor—sold a total of about 643,000 units in Europe, with market share rising from 4.5% to 8.9%, year-on sales increasing by 111.5%; in May this year, the single-month sales of Chinese brands in 31 European countries exceeded Japanese brands for the first time. The larger the share, the higher the cost of the "Quick-Made" label. Former Deputy Secretary General of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, Chen Shihua, reminded at an industry forum before that Chinese cars "really walked too fast", and "can stabilize a bit".

Product competitiveness lesson has been completed, owe the lesson proven by time

It needs to be admitted that today's product competitiveness of Chinese cars is no longer what it used to be. Models such as NIO ET5 have obtained five-star ratings from Euro NCAP (European New Car Assessment Programme). Models of brands such as BYD, Chery, and MG have also successively appeared on the five-star list in recent years.

Besides product competitiveness, the real trend of the price line is more complex than a single number, requiring the curve to be viewed completely. According to CAAM and CPCA data, the average export price of Chinese cars rose steadily from about $16,000 USD in 2021 to about $19,000 USD in 2023; among them, the average export price of new energy vehicles reached above $20,000 around 2022. KPMG China's report calculated at the time that the average price of a single new energy vehicle exported to Europe in 2022 was about $30,000. However, since 2024, this curve has begun to decline: the overall export average price in 2024 was about $18,000 USD, and further dropped to about $16,000 USD in 2025. CPCA analysis indicates the decline is mainly related to the decrease in Tesla export proportion, export market structure changes, and the increase in the proportion of small pure electric models.

At the same time as the total volume average price fluctuates, the value band of top brands is still rising. China Youth Daily reported that BYD overseas sales in 2025 broke through 1 million vehicles for the first time, reaching 1.05 million vehicles, with an average overseas selling price of about 180,000 RMB per vehicle, and overseas business gross profit margin close to 28%. More and more overseas reviews also admit that the configuration and technology provided by Chinese cars in the same price range are no longer inferior.

But trust is a lagging indicator. Safety ratings can be obtained with one test, but brand perception takes decades. Japanese and Korean car manufacturers dug deeply in Europe for decades before completing the image flip from cheap to reliable; no one achieved it by the number of press conferences. Conversely, if the "pulsed new product launch" rhythm at home is read by the external market as speculation, the scores accumulated in product competitiveness will also be diluted by the narrative. Li Shufu, Chairman of Geely Holding Group Group, reminded at the 2026 Chongqing Auto Forum that cars relate to human lives, "cars cannot be produced with short-quick concepts".

From "Cheap" to "Value for Money", a narrative switch that must be completed

Low price itself is not wrong; it is the natural result of Chinese supply chain efficiency and scale advantages. But low price should be the conclusion obtained after consumers vote with money, not a flag raised by Chinese cars going overseas themselves. Once "Cheap" becomes solidified into a label, it will simultaneously lower three things: premium ability, used car residual value, and trade negotiation position. In January this year, China and Europe reached a price commitment arrangement for electric vehicle trade, replacing some anti-subsidy tariffs by setting a minimum price (referred to as "floor price" in the industry), which objectively compressed the space for purely using low price to pry open the European mass market, and also forced Chinese brands to go up.

What Chinese cars truly need to establish in the global impression is "Value for Money": give better technology, stricter verification, and more long-term peace of mind for the same price, and this "goodness" remains valid even after the vehicle is used for many years. This cannot be completed by marketing talk; it is written in the 30,000 km test mileage, written in the BYD Hungary factory under construction, written in the localization cooperation between Chery and Spanish car companies, written in the service outlets gradually opening on European streets and warranty promises, and also written in details such as Chery joining the IATF International Automotive Task Force Board in June this year to participate in global automotive quality standard formulation—IATF is the institution formulating global automotive quality management system standards.

From a domestic perspective, this switch also has no retreat path. According to industry media estimates, the overall profit margin of the automotive industry has fallen below 3%, and the whole vehicle manufacturing link is even as low as about 1.5%, with space for price-for-volume narrowing. Domestically fighting "Involution" and overseas brand building are essentially the same thing: pulling competition back from "who is faster, who is cheaper" to "who is more reliable, who is more worth it".

The draft for comments from the four departments has drawn a bottom line for the industry. The sentence in the People's Daily Client opinion deserves to be quoted again: "'Steady' is a more persistent 'Fast'." Placed in the overseas context, it can be translated into another sentence: The global market will finally remember not whose press conferences are opened more densely, but whose cars still make people feel at ease after being used for many years.

Unload the burden of the "Quick-Made Car", and Chinese cars can walk far with light gear.

* Personal opinion, for reference only.