Dongfeng’s Tai Concept going into production soon
Dongfeng showed off the fantastic Tai Concept Car at the Beijing Auto Show, although it seemed to be fairly a demure stand at Dongfeng which mostly showed off their joint venture produced wares instead of their self produced vehicles.
The Tai Concepet car was Dongfeng’s shot at bringing their own brand upmarket, which is something that most Chinese makers are aiming to produce over the next few months to explore new markets, both Chery, Geely and Hawtai are aiming for this segment, whilst Dongfeng are playing catch up.
Out of the major state owned automakers, Dongfeng is certainly slipping behind in their ability to launch their own branded cars. FAW and SAIC are already leading the way with their self developed B50/B70 and MG6/Roewe 550 models, Dongfeng is not the only late comer though, Guangzhou Auto is on the verge of building its own cars and so are Beijing Auto but the difference here is that Beijing and Guangzhou Auto are using tried and tested platforms in the form of the Saab platforms and the Alfa-Romeo platforms, but it appears that Dongfeng are quite content with using the Citroen ZX platform for their S30 sedan.
The future does not bode well for Dongfeng if they plan to go global.
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What’s surprising is that Dongfeng began an electric vehicle company back in 2001, but after almost 9 years doesn’t really have anything to show for it. And last year there were reports of cooperation with Detroit Electric Holdings EV project but nothing seemed to come of that either. They even participated in the Bibendum Clean Energy competition a couple of years ago.