A visit to the Guangzhou motor show recently threw up an important question: does China's accelerated development point to the future of automotive globally or merely its own?
China is leading on battery tech but its gung- ho, bitterly fought and highly cash-intensive battle to appeal to local customers in other areas is widening the gulf to Europe's car industry.
Many of the new models at the show were massive. For example, the new IM LS9, a mid-market, family- oriented, plug-in hybrid SUV, was almost 5.3m long. Chinese cars have always skewed slightly larger, but the gap is growing.
The show also laid bare the scale of the race to be first to offer full autonomy. My drive of the current Xpeng P7+ liftback using its supervised 'guided pilot' feature demonstrated how near that might be.
China's congested roads have low speed limits and are closely monitored by banks of constantly flashing cameras. Get snapped using a mobile phone and 10 minutes later in comes the message telling how to pay your newly awarded fine.
In that environment, not driving becomes much more desirable. Many would pay extra for the computing power and sensors needed to achieve self-driving, whereas a European car packing 1000 TOPS of computing power would currently be pointless.
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