With the growing population of Chinese cars in Europe, their operational statistics are accumulating and they are still quite alarming — the British magazine Auto Express shared typical examples.
The Chineseization of the Russian car market is already a fact; many of our motorists who have switched to Chinese new cars know firsthand what a shortage of spare parts is and how long and expensive it can be to repair a Chinese car that has been involved in an accident. Nevertheless, in terms of administration, the Russian auto repair market is quite flexible and can, so to speak, be creative in solving a particular problem. Simply put, your car will be repaired, even without clear instructions from the manufacturer.
Europe in this sense is a much more regulated market; differences between Western and Eastern cultures here create certain applied tensions. Auto Express reports that some Chinese models simply cannot be insured because insurers cannot calculate the cost of possible repairs, or insurance is calculated at a maximum rate and is simply unacceptable to the client. Thus, British colleagues tried to insure the Chinese electric sedan BYD Seal (in the main photo) and received only three expensive offers from insurers against dozens of much more affordable options for European-made analogues.
BYD Seal after Euro NCAP side crash test
The main problem with repairing Chinese cars is the lack of clear instructions that would allow repairs to be carried out at an affordable price. In China, labor is still cheap and there is no problem in completely restoring a damaged side or even the entire body — you don’t need clear instructions for this, local mechanics will somehow figure it out themselves and approach the problem creatively, like a garage. In the UK, even a service not authorized by the manufacturer does not work this way; to solve a particular problem you need clear instructions and an understanding of what spare parts, specialists and equipment are required. In addition to the car insurance assessment, this cannot be avoided.
The lack of clear repair plans for serious damage entails a lack of spare parts — the central warehouse simply cannot order something that is not available. As an example, Auto Express cites the electric hatchback GWM Ora 03 (by the way, it is officially sold in Russia): in some cases, after a minor accident, the car has to be written off as a total, because it cannot be repaired due to the lack of spare parts — they simply not provided by the manufacturer! Cars of European brands in similar cases pass through the body shop with a whistle and quickly return to their owners.
GWM Ora 03 for the British market
Even the British brand MG, which has been owned by the Chinese automaker SAIC since 2005 but has not left the British market, has problems with the repair of some models, that is, for almost twenty years SAIC has not adapted to the peculiarities of the British car market. The situation is aggravated by the fact that Chinese companies update their model ranges too quickly and carry out endless restylings, multiplying the already huge range of spare parts — in Europe they are not used to this and do not know how to work with it.
Representatives of the above-mentioned brands, when asked by Auto Express regarding insurance and repairs, assure that it will be better, but the process of adapting Chinese companies to Western repair standards may take some time.