Chinese automakers want their piece of the U.S. market, but obviously, they can’t sell anything just yet because of sky-high 102.5% tariffs. Still, in what looks to be an effort to be ready to hit the ground running if the time comes, many of them maintain a small presence in the U.S. with offices, research centers and even some manufacturing operations.
However, they avoid media contact, don’t attend most industry conferences and haven’t shown up at major auto shows (other than CES in Las Vegas) since before the Pandemic. It’s a funky-ass situation, as Automotive News came to find out when it tried to reach out to one of these ghost operations:
Take SAIC’s office in a white five-story office building on Big Beaver Road eight miles north of Detroit as an example.
On the fourth floor, midway down a quiet hall, a visitor sees the SAIC logo on a gray screened glass door to a darkened office.
No one answers a knock on SAIC’s locked office door. It’s not possible to leave the company a phone message unless the caller has an extension, but no phone directory is offered.
Yet SAIC, short for Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., is one of China’s most successful exporters. Its MG-brand cars and crossovers are top-10 sellers in dozens of countries, including Mexico.
A call to Nio Inc.’s San Jose, Calif., research center connects to a generic answering machine and a general voicemail box that doesn’t even identify the company.
If Li Auto ever followed through with plans to open a Silicon Valley research center, publicly available location and contact details don’t exist; and emails to the company’s Chinese headquarters were not returned.
Phone calls and emails to several other Chinese automakers’ U.S. facilities were also not returned.
Things could soon be turned on their head, though. China and Canada just struck a deal to allow up to 49,000 Chinese-made vehicles to be sold in the country at a reduced tariff rate. It could make entering the U.S. market that much easier since U.S. and Canadian safety and emissions regulations are roughly aligned.
Even if their cars don’t make it over here, there’s still a good reason to set up shop in the U.S.
Stephen Dyer, managing director in the automotive & industrial practice at AlixPartners in Shanghai, says Chinese automakers have planted American stakes to keep up with what’s going on in the auto industry.
Chinese automakers operating R&D centers in the U.S. are looking for talent and learning how to get access to the supply base, Dyer added.
Automotive News took the time to look over the U.S. footprints of BYD, Chery, Geely, Great Wall Motors, Karma Automotive, Li Auto, Nio and Xpeng. If I summed all of it up here, you’d probably get tired and wouldn’t read the rest of TMS, so I suggest finishing up here and then heading over there to get the full rundown.
