Produced by ZhiNeng Auto
The term "rush-to-market cars" is currently trending. As regulatory requirements for validation become stricter, this trend has truly hit the brakes.
Interestingly, while domestic regulators are busy setting rules for "speed," global automakers are doing the exact opposite by learning from China's "speed." With regulators raising requirements on one side and others copying the playbook on the other, what exactly is this two-way convergence about?
Part 1: What Are Rush-to-Market Cars?
This year, the National Automotive Standardization Technical Committee solicited public opinions on three finalization test procedures for NEVs (New Energy Vehicles), proposing to increase the total mileage for reliability driving tests of NEV models to 30,000 kilometers.
Meanwhile, executives from joint ventures have criticized some brands for accelerating their launch schedules by cutting necessary testing phases, effectively turning consumers into test drivers in disguise and planting safety hazards.
So, what exactly is a "rush-to-market car"? Simply put, it refers to new models that are launched on a large scale before reaching the maturity level implicitly expected by the industry—they are essentially premature babies.
From January to May this year, 542 new car models were launched in the Chinese market, averaging 3.6 per day. In the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) vehicle era, it generally took over 36 months from project initiation to mass production for a single model. Now, many brands have compressed this to 18 months. As one executive put it, "It's completely crazy; this is a car!"
Speed is not entirely a bad thing. Simulation, platformization, and modularization have indeed boosted development efficiency. The problem arises when "speed" goes off track. Some trade time by cutting tests, while others improve efficiency through systematic processes. These are two different paths, and the former is laying mines.
Whole vehicle development has two critical gates: DV (Design Validation) and PV (Production Validation). DV verifies the correctness at the design level, while PV validates production-related aspects to identify hidden risks. From the perspective of traditional quality control, whether in design or manufacturing, eliminating either gate will cause production consistency to collapse and quality to fluctuate, especially for a product like a car that simultaneously requires quality, durability, and reliability.
Reliability, quality, and durability may all sound like they are talking about "whether the car is good or not," but they actually manage completely different things. One manages "whether it will break down," another manages "whether the assembly is neat," and the third manages "whether it will fall apart under long-term stress."
The aspects of rush-to-market cars that are often criticized are precisely these three areas not being done solidly.
◎ Reliability is about probability.
Under specified conditions and within a specified time, what is the probability that this vehicle or component can complete its intended functions? Whether it will break down and how soon it is prone to failure are calculated as failure probabilities. For example, if a car is driven for 5 years and 150,000 kilometers, and the probability of the air conditioning system not failing is 95%, this is a reliability metric.
In daily use, we look at fault frequency, failure rate, and Mean Distance Between Failures (MTBF), to prevent the car from breaking down on the road and to avoid sudden functional failures.
◎ Quality: Here, the term quality specifically refers to the consistency of mass production manufacturing, which is a different matter from design.
It focuses on assembly gaps, screw torque, wiring harness layout, paint surface defects, assembly errors or omissions, incoming material defects, and dimensional deviations.
No matter how beautiful the design is, how smoothly R&D validation goes, or how excellent the reliability design is, as long as production line management is poor, it will still assemble a bunch of problems for you. This is called poor manufacturing quality.
The drawings represent a top-tier solution, and the designers have considered both reliability and durability. However, if the workers are careless during assembly, installing parts crookedly or failing to snap the clips tightly, that is a quality issue, not a design flaw.
◎ Durability is about robustness and endurance.
Under long-term and repeated stress, can the vehicle withstand wear, fatigue, and aging without permanent structural damage? The keywords are fatigue, wear, structural damage, and aging. It focuses on tough components like chassis structures, body sheet metal, suspension bushings, bearings, seals, battery structures, and motor housings.
Typical failures look like this: bushing cracking, fatigue cracks in chassis welds, shock absorber oil leaks, rubber part aging, and seal leakage.
In fact, a car must cover these three elements to provide a good product over a long lifecycle.
Part 2: Why Foreign Automakers Are Learning from China
But this Chinese speed has indeed left global automakers stunned. In the past, the West taught China how to build cars; now, global automakers are learning from China how to compress development cycles. The market share of foreign brands in China has dropped from 66% in 2020 to 25% today. It takes Chinese domestic automakers only 18 to 24 months to bring a car to market, while international giants generally still take 3 to 5 years.
To provide suitable products in China, it is imperative to improve efficiency. The old model of building cars in Germany and then selling them in China no longer works because the iteration speed cannot meet current demands. These established giants, who used to be the teachers, are now struggling to keep up as the student runs too fast. Chinese demands are rapidly fed back to development teams, accelerating the pace of forward-shifted decision-making, localization, and software iterations.
Yet, just as Chinese speed is being exported globally, domestic regulators are starting to hit the brakes. The access review requirements from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) are also clear: traditional vehicles must complete a full 30,000-kilometer reliability validation. With the proportion of pure electric vehicles growing higher and higher, they must naturally keep up. Quality is an absolute veto item, and compressing cycles cannot be without a bottom line. Technological empowerment cannot replace the real-world testing of extreme cold, extreme heat, high altitude, and collisions. These are hard requirements that cannot be skipped.
Therefore, the interesting part of this two-way convergence is this: China is teaching the world "speed," and the world is returning "stability" to China. Both sides are making up for their own missed lessons.
So, from a macro perspective:
◎ The baseline of safety and reliability must not be lost; neither the DV nor the PV gates can be skipped.
◎ The systematic development process must not be lost.
◎ Real-vehicle road testing must not be lost. No matter how strong the simulation is, it cannot replace real cars running in extreme cold, extreme heat, and extreme danger.
What can be accelerated is primarily testing efficiency, along with simulation, platformization, modularization, and OTA (Over-The-Air) iterations. This is the right path. Of course, we can have an in-depth discussion on this topic later. Actually, everyone can have their own arguments; this is just to kick off the discussion.
Conclusion
I think China's car manufacturing has now reached a crossroads. "Speed" has already proven that we can learn it and teach others. Next, we need to clearly ensure that this "speed" can be controlled, that quality is flawless, and that no safety hazards are left behind. The gap between being "rush-to-market" and being "effortlessly proficient" is not about speed, but the confidence to slow down when it is time to slow down.