TESLA vs CHINA! Epic Comparison Test – Can the Chinese Make a Tesla Beater?

Hello and welcome to a rather special MotorTrend comparison test. We just got back from China where we got to drive 19 Chinese market EVs. What would you like to check about? Over on MotorTrend.com you will find videos and articles on all of the cars we got to experience. If you're as unfamiliar with Chinese EVs as I was going into this trip, well fear not, I've made a film where I introduce you to every single car that we drove while we were in China. Go check that out at the link in our bio. Ed, two questions. One, why the vest? And two, why should these people care about Chinese EVs? Great questions. So the vest was a gift and a mandate of our friends that helped put together this program. So we worked with China's number one automotive media site, D-CAR. They helped set this whole thing up as part of their annual summer test. And part of us going around on this proving ground was I had to wear a safety vest with their logos on it, which they let me keep. So I'm wearing it for you all. We were invited out to China by the automotive platform D-CAR in order to drive and test these domestic Chinese market cars, a very rare and exciting opportunity. The cars, the cars there. China is building some really interesting cars. And if you profess to be an automotive enthusiast of any kind, you need to have an open mind and realize that there's technology coming from other places that will have a serious impact on the cars you know and love. They may even come here and you may even get to buy and drive one. So why not go be ahead of the trend, motor trend, figure out what's going on and report it back to you. So that's why I said we got this opportunity, super condensed opportunity to drive a whole bunch of Chinese EVs across all of the top name brands. We got to go. And indeed we did. I'm about to test a Tesla Model 3 long range dual motor. It's a car we know well, a car that probably needs no introduction. This version is made in China. And of course, we're testing it here so that we're comparing apples to apples. We're about to compare it against some Chinese made EVs. We're about to compare it to a Volkswagen ID7. So all the numbers we're getting are coming from the same proving grounds on the same day, in the same conditions with the same driver. What would you say to the American public, the American car buying public? What is the perception of Chinese EVs coming into this trip? I would say there's, I mean, the difference between what the American public perceives and maybe what we might perceive going in. American public probably perceives them as maybe cheap copycats. I think we've all been doing this long enough to know that, you know, not to underestimate any automaker. We went there open minded just to see what we know, how good these cars could be. That was definitely top of mind for me. We went into it under no illusions. We were hoping to be wowed, impressed by the tech on display and, you know, all the other things, the charging infrastructure, the dynamics of the driving and all that kind of thing. What was your key takeaway from the field of cars that we were presented with when we arrived in China? Well, really that, just to go along with what Christian was saying, this perception I think that America has had, there's really a negativity around a lot of Chinese products. It's either cheap Chinese or it's a knockoff. I think the running joke in comments on YouTube and Instagram are like, it's the Timu version. It's the cheap, you know, poorly made version of whatever. Which runs a little bit counter to reality, right? Because like your iPhone is made in China. Like most computers, a lot of camera, digital cameras, a lot of high quality electronics are made over there. So I think you go that without swimming in your brain, you land in China, you go out to this proving grounds, you see all of these vehicles and you start getting into them, you start driving them, you start talking or attempting to talk to the assistant in the vehicle. And at least what I came away with was there were no real gaps. Like there wasn't anything glaring that I could consistently say or cross and go, oh yeah, they're still missing out on so-and-so, right? And I've been doing this long enough where I drove back 12 years ago, that electric car from China, Koda. And that was definitely that Timu sort of knockoff. Like Christian, I think you were there. Like that thing was like very cheap. It was an old, it's like a Mitsubishi compact car knockoff built by this and with a battery, a lithium poly battery, lipoly battery in there. And that definitely was terrible. I remember the shifter on that was a knob. And if you spun it, it would just keep cycling through the gears. Right. And now we're driving these cars that if you could say, I think on the one end where they are, there's a lot of copying or at least lifting of technology. You certainly saw Tesla's influence. Everywhere. Everywhere across a lot of these cars, either in the adoption of like a single sort of tablet style multi-information display mounted in the center to, you know, the decision against using controls on stocks or knobs. Like yolks in a few cases. A lot of, yeah. A couple of yoke steering wheels. And in some cases, some very minimal interiors. So I would say that in the interest of fairness, that isn't something that's exclusive to Chinese EVs. We're also seeing that industry-wide. Like the Lincoln Nautilus or the Cadillac Escalade. Huge screens across. Great point. Yeah. Not the Chinese aren't the only people copying Tesla, right? For sure. And it's also kind of smart. Tesla being, you know, the most. You want to meet the best. Right. And yeah, which speaks to why does Tesla minimize everything? Also, it becomes, it pulls cost out of the vehicle, right? As Elon has said, the best part is no part. Christian, what was the cost spread of the vehicles that we drove? That ran from about $17,000 to $151,000. And the cheap car was the Baojian Yandao. I'm probably butchering the name. It means cloud. That is a GM, Wuling and SAIC collaboration. And then the Yanguang U8, which is a VUID luxury SUV plug-in hybrid. And we should mention that is the price from $17,000 to $150,000 or so. Directly converted from Chinese yuan. Not including what it would theoretically cost if it came to the U.S., which would be 100% tariff. That's right. Yeah. So with that in mind, then we're going to refer to these cars with those prices. We had a really interesting little subsection of vehicles, the sort of Tesla Model 3 and comparative vehicles. Why don't we talk about those for a second? So we had the Tesla and then we also had the Volkswagen ID.7, which is a car that you may not know now, but you're certainly going to be seeing around soon. That's coming to the States, right? Yeah. So, you know, we work with this Group D car, this big media site in China, and they actually had all of these cars together for their summer testing. And we got to pick through and find these different groupings and these interesting subsets of vehicles. And we did land upon doing this little comparison test around a vehicle we know very well, the Tesla Model 3. And then a vehicle that is definitely coming to the U.S., which is the Volkswagen ID.7. And then we looked around for what else that they had that was super interesting. And we knew we had to test the NIO ET5. And then there was another vehicle, the Zeker 007. And then the last one was a late ad and also one of the most exciting ones because it's from one of China's largest mobile phone makers, Xiaomi. So the Xiaomi SU7, Speed Ultra 7, came into the mix. And that one actually, I'll start there, was really cool because it had like McLaren-like headlights. It had this little pop-up tail. It was very sporty. Taycan-like profile. Kia Stinger interior. Right. And again, the headline being, this is the car that Apple could not make, right? This is a mobile phone manufacturer, their first product. And it was pretty darn compelling. And also, I was looking up a little bit about it. They revealed that car in like November of last year, and it's on sale now, which is wild. Granted, they partnered with Beijing Auto, so a state-owned company. But like, it's wild that that car is here today. Also, I mean, competitive on specs, 800-volt system, fast charging. I thought it drove pretty great too. Yeah, very sporty, super fast. I would say it was the most foreign of the Chinese vehicles in that the user experience, maybe outside of like the steering and putting in the gear, I could figure out. But finding my way around the rest of the car was a lot harder than the others. And I think maybe speaks to the fact that this is a non-traditional, fundamentally a non-traditional car manufacturer because the team comes from mobile phone. Yeah, and when meanwhile, we're trying to find settings like sport mode or drift mode or whatnot. I mean, you had a chance to try drift mode, didn't you? I did, to mixed results. But I think that's more on me than it is on the car. Yeah, dynamically, I found, and I think we knew this, from what our colleagues and friends at D-CAR had said going into it, this is going to be one of the more dynamically sort of sorted vehicles. And I think we all agree that that was the case. That isn't to say that they haven't had issues in dialing that car in, right? There were some stories when the car was first driven by journalists. It was influencers, a lot of them wrecked it. So they introduced a beginner mode for those folks, which I think is pretty funny. But it also speaks to how there's a mobile phone company. Let me just make a new setting, a new app for that. I think the other one that we were very interested to drive, and I was glad we had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with it, was that NIO. So I've heard a ton about NIO. NIO has all this technology that sets them apart from even the most forward-thinking of these EV or even Chinese EV brands. It had Nomi, it had the in-car assistant, which is like this little cute little LCD face that will... It's like a Tamagotchi. It's like a Tamagotchi, right. It'll pivot around, it'll look at you, it talks to you. It dances with your music. Like I'm so anti like all those car assistants, but that was charmed, like how could you not be? It'll tell you a joke, it can tell you what the weather is, it can help you order food, you can ask it trivia questions. And unlike almost every other Chinese EV there, it actually spoke in English too, because NIO is already on sale in Europe. Although it wasn't great. If you went down a couple levels, it had to default to Chinese if it ran out of responses. But the NIO ET5 and getting to drive it and then sort of messing around with Nomi was awesome. And then subsequently we took it to a battery swap facility, which was very eye-opening too. That was great. And both in terms of the process, but also just in terms of the idea and the fact that, again, they managed to get something to market that Tesla spoke about almost a decade ago, if not a decade ago. Right, just that there's a company out there that managed to get battery swap out with over like, it's over 2,500, I think close to 2,500 battery swap stations around the world. That's pretty wild. They built power journey corridors to like popular sites. Yes. Pretty cool. I don't know if that model would work necessarily here. I struggled to wrap my mind around American buyers, leasing batteries, for instance, and wanting their own battery back, so to speak. But it's interesting to say the least. And the fast swap time was, I mean, undeniable, five minutes. Five minutes to fill it up. Yeah, it's a very compelling package, the NIO as a whole, from the way it drives, the way that the interior is laid out. And I think that was something else actually that I found very interesting is the importance that is placed on the interior space with these Chinese manufacturers. And speaking again to the guys and girls at D-CAR, that is something that the consumer is really focused on in the Chinese market. And that's probably a key, you know, worth mentioning to the folks that are watching that, you know, we went to China, we drove Chinese cars that were made for Chinese consumers and were set up for them. So even Eric Tingwall, he did all the testing of the vehicles and he noted that, you know, the surface we're on is probably a little bit slippery, more slippery than what we're used to testing. Obviously the heat, it was crazy hot with a high humidity, very different than we normally test. But to your point, the Chinese consumer has different wants and needs than the U.S. consumer. It's sort of a more status-oriented culture. Cars are still expensive and mostly for wealthier people. And the wealthy guy actually doesn't drive the vehicle, they sit in the back. So a lot of the vehicles we saw there, there were some that were expressly made for like to be chauffeured in. And this has been long discussed in the China market that they pioneered, like Audi Group made the A4L. They made a long wheelbase A4 over there. VW had long wheelbase sedans because that was for the factory boss. They would ride in the back and they hire a driver to drive them around. I think you saw evidence of that in the cars that we tested in this comparison. Like they had larger rear seat packages than the Model 3. They were more comfortable in the back, a little bit more headroom and more features. You also see that in the 8S suites all these cars had, because some of the D-car journalists would tell us that they get in a car, they turn on their equivalent of autopilot or full self-driving and just let the car drive. You get that little taste of being driven from the driver's seat. And even though the Tesla Model 3 that we were testing was the updated Highland as we know it with the small infotainment screen for the rear passengers, I still found that, I think without fail, the three Chinese market cars and the Volkswagen had more convenience features for the rear seat passengers. Including that Zeker, which was one that I think we were all very curious to take a look at because Zeker is part of the Geely family and it's the only Chinese brand that's actually operating in the US under the Volvo nameplate, right? So we're getting... And Polestar and Lotus. And Lotus. Well, yes. But most people don't get to drive Lotus. But yeah, you're right. So Geely owns Lotus, Polestar, Lincoln Co, Zeker. But Zeker is like their... I think it's a little bit more of on the Chinese, the halo side, right? It's a little higher end. Lexus C. Yeah. And so to get to sample that vehicle running around the track was pretty fun. Yeah, I thought that car was stunning to look at. A little bit of lucid in design, but just overall gorgeous, its own thing. Interior, I thought was one of the best of that whole bunch. It managed to be minimalist, you know, a la Tesla, but unique. I think it had elements that were new and exciting to me as a US resident. I think overall for me, that was the most dynamic package, a full, you know, as a car, I think that was, you know, kind of the most attractive of the five cars that we tested. And it claims 500 kilowatt charge speed, which is sort of ridiculous. Yeah, where are you going to charge it? Where are you going to charge it? You certainly can't charge it anywhere in the US. Like we're topping out at 350 kilowatts. So amazing. And then the other one, so we talked a little bit about the Tesla, which I'll come back to, but that I'm very curious about the ID.7 because it is slated to come to the US, but you know, slightly underwhelmed. Underpowered, good steering, very dramatic steering for sure, but it felt slow. Didn't feel particularly special or well-built compared to the Tesla or the other cars there. Oddly, I think Eric Toon will disagree. He seemed to like how that thing drove quite a lot. I was hopeful that it was going to be a lot better given that I spent a year with the ID.4, the smaller sibling of that vehicle. And I was disappointed to find that while it certainly has a lot more features, a lot more stuff going on on the screens, which I think it has to, to compete in the China market. Fundamentally, the software behind that screen was really kind of wonky. It's no wonder they're going to Rivian for software. Rivian and Xpeng for some of that architecture. It is worth pointing out the Volkswagen, the motors might be different in the US who probably will get a more powerful version. You'd hope so. Yeah. I mean, the ID.Buzz is certainly working out that way. So I would assume the ID.7 would be similar. That said, I mean, it felt like about 30% or 40% larger than it was huge in the other vehicles. And you got more space in the back because of it. It's like a Taurus versus a Ford Fusion to use a dated reference. Yeah. But, you know, after driving them, what did you guys, where did you end up ranking them? I certainly have some different thoughts. Yes, I think that was key is that we all had slightly different takeaways. For me, I put the Tesla at the top. And I do caveat that by querying whether or not I have a slight sort of, not bias, but just familiarity, kind of muscle memory thing. You know, I'm not by any means a Tesla, you know, advocate to the sort of nth degree, but driven the 3 and the 3 Highland before and getting into it again and taking it around the track, I did find that despite maybe decrying the steering and brakes in previous comparison tests and, you know, during our of the year last year, I still found it to be probably the best overall. Next up, the Xiaomi SU7. I did think that dynamically that car was pretty good. Loved the styling. Liked very much the tech integration. Pretty compelling as a package. Zika next for me. Again, styling great. Performance was pretty good. And again, I am slightly sad about the weather conditions. I don't think that we got to push these cars, but I felt that the Zika handled the wet weather, which was a good and valid test pretty well. Fourth position, the NIO. Battery tech is fantastic, but I'm not quite sure that that is the right model for the American market right away. And so that's why I placed that there. Again, this isn't maybe a conventional comparison judging call, but I was trying to be slightly more holistic about it. And then I have the Volkswagen, which again, like you guys have just said, isn't maybe quite representative of the one we're going to see, but on the day it impressed me the least. I kind of had the same, except I swapped the top two and the bottom two. So I had the Xiaomi Su-7 first, the Tesla Model 3 second, then the Zika, then the Volkswagen ID.7, and last I should put the NIO because I didn't particularly like the way it drove. But that's purely on the basis of how they handle the track. And I was dazzled by the acceleration of the Xiaomi and it's sort of looser handling. If I were to predict how they would do in the US market, I actually would probably put the NIO back up at the top because first of all, I don't think most Americans drive anywhere near the limit capabilities of the vehicle. They hardly take any into the track. So I think they would be far more impressed by Nomi, by the battery swap technology, by the room in the vehicle and the styling. So from a product and market fit, I had NIO way up at the top and actually Tesla number two behind it. So the rest can sort themselves out. Yeah. My rankings actually echoed yours. They're the same. I just thought the Model 3 felt from a driving perspective, the most sorted, felt well-engineered. It felt designed with a purpose. The Highland update makes it probably the best Tesla that Tesla's ever made. Just really quality car, especially for the price. Great range, great charging speeds. And next, obviously the Xiaomi. I found myself nitpicking that car. It's like, I wished a little firmer steering. I wish for all stuff that could be fixed with software, but 800 volt capability is a huge plus. Great looking package, affordable. Zeker, I thought it was just stunning to look at. I wanted that to be a little bit more pleasing dynamically, but also I realized a different market and also the weather was terrible. So then, yeah, the NIO. I wasn't wowed with the build quality on that. I thought it was good, not great. The other three cars above it all felt more what a buyer in our market would expect at that price point. And I'm skeptical on the battery technology, the battery swapping technology here. It's a chicken and egg scenario launching that car here. And then lastly, the Volkswagen. Solid car, but not really... Competed. Yeah, yeah. Looking at those five vehicles and the sort of spread of those five vehicles maybe the gaps between each one, regardless of how you place them in relation to one another, what were your key takeaways? For me, it was that there isn't much of a gap, right? They're all quite good. The Tesla, that Tesla Model 3 Highland is probably the best Tesla to date and the others were all bunched up right underneath it. For me, it wasn't like one of them, well, maybe the Volkswagen. It's not like there was a massive drop-off. Yeah, no, they were all quite close, I thought. They all had the feature sets that the buyers in the market expect. The software and all, as far as we could figure out, were quite intuitive. The Xiaomi accepted, which says a lot considering they're all mostly in Mandarin. We were able to figure stuff out. Yeah, they're all very impressive cars. Yeah, I was struck by how familiar, as you put it, and maybe I was trying to see through that bias that Model 3 Plus drove. And I was like, this is very clearly among the top in terms of vehicle handling, just out on that test track, period, end of story. But also that it was so stark in that interior. That execution is so minimalist. And then hearing our friends at D-Car, the local guys say, it's too plain. It's too unadorned. Some people said, actually, it's too cheap. Weirdly, Tesla gets dinged in this country for poor build quality on some occasions. And I think our Chinese friends noticed it as well. I think that cuts both ways. It presents an opportunity for those other brands to differentiate, which they did. So we saw a lot of, I think, in the Zeker and the Xiaomi, for sure. It kind of started with a Model 3 layout and then added back. So yeah, here's a way to shift it that you don't need to go onto a screen. Here's a stalk over here for other controls. So in one sense, very smart because you're giving folks who were maybe critical of Tesla's design something to mess with. But it also doesn't set you apart, right? Tesla is like the model because it takes such a hard line. This is crazy hard position on vehicle controls and trying to simplify, simplify. And it can feel a little muddied when the other guys put stuff back. That was one thing that disappointed me. I would really hope to see a distinctive, unique trait. And it was all different variations of the same flavor in that regard. And I get you have to compete with Tesla, but I would have liked to see something truly unique. And I think the closest we came to was Nomi. Exactly, exactly. I was just going to say, if there was any brand out there that was giving itself a real competitive edge, it was Nomi. It was NIO through the Nomi assistant. There was another that's not a part of the comparison test, the Jidoo, the Robo 01, also has a very unique approach to a voice assistant and also some cool styling and crazy doors. So boys, we went into this trip, I think collectively with a lot of questions. I think we got some answers, but my question is this, what questions did we come away with? What did we go there, see, and come back wondering? For me, the biggest question that still remains, I think it's front of mind for everybody, is will Chinese car manufacturers come to the US? Will they? That's still, I think, an open question. And then how, with what vehicles? What will they come over here with? We drove actually a lot of sedans. We drove a lot of compact cars and sedans, a few SUVs, but that's not necessarily the right product mix for the US. Despite all the cool features that we attempted to sample, the Chinese consumer is very different from the American consumer. I don't think we care that much about in-car assistance and how fancy they can get. Moreover, I think we're skeptical of them. Right, right. We haven't incorporated that technology as much via our mobile phones. Maybe we will now that AI is starting to pick up and every one of the social networks and the search engines is adding an assistant to it, but I don't know. I mean, it was interesting that the Chinese journalists we were with were as interested in the processing power and the chipset in these cars as we would be in motors or engines. I thought that was very telling in the differences between our two markets. Yeah, our colleagues over there, D-Car, they helped put together some spec sheets and one of the categories they put was computer processor in the car, which would be like Motor Trend back in the day, putting like, who made the transmission? Like, was it Getrag or was it somebody else? So yeah, it's a good point. Between when they come, what vehicles they'll bring and then the price, I think. For me, the fact that all of these Chinese EVs that we drove, with the exception of that Yangyang U8, were basically undercutting US competition by probably like 20% or more. I mean, that alone, it makes your head start to spin. Like, if they can sell that Baojian, that cloud vehicle for $17,000, or actually, I think it starts in the 12s. If you put 100% tariff on it and it comes to the US, that's a real problem for some of our car manufacturers. And then final question from me, if you guys could give a piece of advice to the makers of the cars we drove while we were in China, what would that advice be? First of all, work with us at Motor Trend. No, I should, I'll end with that. Advice for the Chinese car manufacturers that we drove, I think make sure you've done the research on what American consumers really, really want to have within the feature set of the vehicle, particularly what's on the screens. And you don't need to go overboard with the foofy, the fancy stuff. That said, there's an opportunity there to dazzle if you have an in-car assistant as cute as Nomi that does all the different things, but it's gonna take a lot of education on the part of the company, educating themselves, and then on the flip side, educating the consumer about what it can do. My advice would be the hardware is as important as the software. There are some vehicles, the MG Cyberster in particular, I'm thinking of, which is a little sports car, just didn't feel finished. The software was cool and flashy, and it had these great sounds and effects, but driving the car, I was just left cold. I felt traces of that in some of the other cars we drove too, like maybe a motor pulling here or there, maybe some integration issues with the P-HEV systems. It's just little final polishing pieces that would probably get sorted in a Western or Japanese or South Korean automaker, not assuredly, but likely. Meanwhile, the software was dazzling and fantastic, so that'd be my advice. But I think overall, we had a fantastic time. We want to thank DCAR, of course, for putting that together and for allowing us to be part of the journey. And look, this is just one conversation, one 30-minute rambling. We've got articles, photographs, other videos, everything's at mosttrend.com. I would encourage everyone to take a look and be as excited and as interested as we are, because this really is, if not the future, then it's a big part of the conversation. Yep.