In the business of car manufacturing, China and India, after Europe, US and Japan are poised to become the next global players in a few years to come. However there's one slight problem that goes out of hand at the moment, thou India was pretty much 'confident' with their own designs and creations albeit falling 10 - 20 years behind in terms of dynamics and technology; China on the other hand, decides to speed things up a little bit, not by quantum physics of time traveling using space warp or wormholes, but a little bit more 'subtle' in their approach. Buy something created by the Japanese or European, draw it up in AutoCAD or 3D Max, tweak a little on the front or back end, dismantle it and look for suppliers. Walla! There ya go, 0 costs for R&D, all the profits for manufacturing 'good' cars. In fact, the Chinese were so confident at their 'aftercreations' that they fear it might be copied again by some of their own mainlanders, they decide to patent their copies in regions where those cars weren't sold, prompting a worldwide race to patent everything by everyone. The deliberate attempts of Chinese manufacturers had created a worldwide outcry of condemnation, including yours truly. Now, it seems the Chinese had decided to 'contribute' their 5000 years of wisdom and ingenuity back to the modern world, and for a moment decided to go with something original. Shown at the Paris Motor Show, this very small electric city car dubbed Chika, was the creation of China Automobile, represents (which they believe) the first step in original Chinese automotive design language, a first baby step at shaking off their copycat images. Our verdict? Ehem... err... oh well... at least there's no fear of someone else bootlegging this creation we reckon. What do you think?
