Chinese automakers showed up in force at the Paris auto show

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Molly Boigon (0:29)

Hello and welcome to the Automotive News Shift Podcast, where we bring you the latest on automotive technology, trends, and transformation.

I'm Molly Boigon, tech and innovation reporter at Automotive News. Today, we're bringing you a panel I moderated at Automotive News Congress on the next phase of the software-defined vehicle. Executives from General Motors, McKinsey, Here Technologies, and Bosch weigh in on the shift to the AI-defined vehicle, where automakers should partner versus own the software, and how to keep the car's promise of constant updates from falling apart.

Gary Cygan Jr. (1:05)

What's key to that is designing the architecture so that it is much more addressable for a longer period of time.

Molly Boigon (1:13)

But first, let's talk about the week. For that, I'm joined by Doug Bolduc, managing editor of Automotive News Europe. Doug, you've been in beautiful Paris at the Paris Auto Show. What's it like on the ground?

Doug Bolduc (1:25)

Molly, very exciting. I would just have to say it was the most electric auto show that I've intended in a number of years. The fact that the Chinese are coming to the auto shows in such high numbers, I think we were more than 15 Chinese brands there, which was double the previous Paris show. That has put the pressure on the Europeans to show up, and they did enforce, particularly Stellantis, had a very impressive group night, where they rolled out new designs for a number of models, and those models got a ton of attention at the show, particularly the two CV, the Doche Vaux, as it's called, in France, and it's got nicknames in different parts of Europe, but a very popular small vehicle that you basically couldn't even get a picture of on the first media day of the show, just because it was constantly crowded, and that's rare with journalists, usually a bunch of grumpy people saying, this is not really that great, but they were all taking pictures of it, like children.

Molly Boigon (2:37)

Yeah, so you mentioned the 2CV and there's other automakers that are also trying to build to Europe's new e-car rules for small, cheaper EVs. How are automakers doing that while maintaining their margins as they're building these simpler, more affordable EVs?

Doug Bolduc (2:57)

Well, the idea behind it is that it would be a combined effort, that there would be some incentives from the government to do this, that there would be an ability to do it together with other automakers. So that's how they're thinking about getting the costs down, because the idea is that from the government and the industry, you want to have affordable electric mobility.

We're seeing the prices go down significantly for electric vehicles in Europe because we're wanting to see some of the smaller cars, and we're in the 15, 25,000 euro range, which is unbelievable because before you couldn't touch an electric car for less than 35,000 to 45,000 euros. So the e-car, it's always going to be very difficult for them to make big margins because it's a small car. However, if they're doing it in mass volume, if they're doing it together and sharing our platforms and sharing our components, kind of taking a page of the Chinese playbook because a lot of the vehicles that are done there are done on a certain level and there's not a lot of variation. They all have one kind of battery, one kind of technology, one kind of an ADAS system with slight variations, but the basic is the same. If Europe can also do that, it's really going to make electric mobility affordable.

Molly Boigon (4:23)

You know, you mentioned the Chinese automakers. We're also talking about how they sort of encourage a greater presence for some of the Western automakers at the show. What new trends or technology stood out to you about the Chinese vehicles?

Doug Bolduc (4:38)

One of the things that they're doing, and we've also seen it from the Koreans and the Japanese in the past, but the Chinese are trying to always go to the next level, is that you don't have to finagle with when you're going to purchase the car. It's not like there were 17 different variations of the car, and then you have this menu of 8,000 different options that are always ways to upsell you.