In December, almost one in five new cars registered in the UK came from Chinese brands. For professional or armchair industry watchers, that is a staggering statistic. Never have we seen disruption on this scale.
The Japanese, the Koreans and even Tesla took years to gain a significant toehold here, and the Chinese have blown right past them in terms of share in an eye-opening 12 months.
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What *is* extraordinary is their investment in the support network. Dealerships have popped up everywhere almost overnight, and a lot of people will just shop at their nearest dealer, or are put off if they need to travel far for servicing. The cars also have long warranties, which is another facet of network investment.
That's something that other companies really need to be learning from. Jaguar in particular has always struggled with its service network, and it's resulted in their products selling a fraction of rivals', even when the cars themselves have been highly competitive.