The Chief Executive of Jaguar Land Rover, Ralf Speth, expressed his utter disappointment over the ill-practice of China’s copying habits. He also said that the country had enough mettle to create something of its own. This statement of the CEO came after one Chinese automobile manufacturer reportedly launched a model, which had a similar design with the Evoque SUV from Range Rover. Jiangling Motors Co. had recently launched the LandWind X7 during the Guangzhou Motor Show held in China. After its official launch in November 2014, it attracted criticism from the British car manufacturer.
During the launch of the car at the 2014 event, the Jaguar Land Rover CEO said that he would post his complaints to the Chinese officials about the theft of this intellectual property. The authorities in China, however, dismissed his claims outright and gave the green signal to Jiangling Motors. As a result, the manufacturer went ahead and produced the LandWind X7 during the beginning of this year.
Voicing his concerns at the announcement of the Tata Motors Q4 results in Mumbai, Speth said, “China, from my point of view has enough creativity and engineering power to do something on their own and doesn’t have to fall back to the time when copying was of interest.” Speth also said that there is hardly any recourse for those automobile manufacturers whose designs were copied by the Chinese car companies. He added, “We can’t do anything. I hope the Chinese customer at the end of the day sees the difference and selects the real product and not a copied one. We hope they generate a self-regulation process so that they can get rid of this kind of copy-paste way of working.”
Evoque is a fully-grown SUV from the British manufacturer and has a price tag of Rs 40 lakhs in China, while the Chinese counterpart, LandWind X7 will cost around Rs 14 lakhs. It is expected that the copied model will eat into the benefits of the Land Rover luxury SUV.
