At first glance I wondered why RiveraNotario had posted these two versions of the gen2 RAV4s. Because we never got the swb version? No. Because these aren’t actually RAV4s. They just look identical to them.
These are Jonway A380s, a Chinese clone of the RAV4 if there ever was one. It created quite a stir back in 2005 when it was released. Since that was right about the time that Toyota ended production of the gen2 RAV4, it might have been assumed that Toyota sold Jonway the tooling and a license to go with it. Not so.
This swb version is a pre-facelift version, with the smaller grille. That looks even more like the RAV4.
Here’s the original. Jonway was quite faithful in its cribbing.
The two door has a badge on its rear door that I assume is meant to identify it. F06390B4 (or 84). That’s certainly not a copy of any other car name.
Before you pile in with fingers wagging about cheap Chinese copies of everything, let’s keep in mind that this was almost twenty years ago, and that Chinese EVs are considered to be world class. Elon Musk himself is impressed, and perhaps a bit concerned.
It’s good to know that Chinese copying is a thing of the past.
I didn’t say it was a thing of the past. I said that they’ve also vastly increased their ability to engineer and build world class products.
Chinese indeed likes to copy I think the exact reasons are various and complicated. First Chinese education system emphasizes to learn or feed the basic knowledge to students, that results a very good student with little creativity. This is a very common among the educated class in China. As for copying others, mostly it is mindset why reinventing a wheel, just copying other did, learning and refining. This practice can be seen cross industrial sectors.
Eventually the copies get better, but China hasn’t proved they can move past copying. I’m using a 70’s Pioneer PL-50 which is a Japanese knockoff of a 60’s Empire 298. The copy was good, but in the 80’s they were coming out with linear tracking players, world class cartridges and needles, and were ushering in all of the media format standards that would keep Japan in control of legacy media for 20 years, while America just gave up. There was nobody willing to compete, it was more profitable to fire everyone and be a middleman. It doesn’t look that’s Elon’s intention.
I don’t think the one negates the other. China’s EV industry is on fire (in the good way, mostly) and there is (still) a tall mountain of shoddy, pathetic products coming from China, including knockoffs and counterfeits and other suchlike.
I don’t think China has a stranglehold on producing shoddy, pathetic products though, you can get those from any corner of the world, just usually they cost more when produced elsewhere.
I think he meant that just because it’s made in China doesn’t necessarily mean it’s just a cheap and junky copy of something better already existing. Most of those crappy products wouldn’t have a market without a western distributor willing to order, stock, and retail them and a willing end buyer for whom initial cost tops every other criteria coupled with a regulatory framework that allows (encourages?) it to happen. Many if not most western companies willing to outsource their own needs over the last couple of decades in order to “save money” and then not necessarily policing the quality of the product adequately didn’t or isn’t helping things with a few notable exceptions. And yes, I know it’s a far more complex situation than my pithy comment here indicates.
Yes, my (too short) point was that China can and does build everything on the spectrum from cheap knock-offs to absolutely world class products. As Jim said, they do that for one reason: to meet the various demands from the global market.
Actually, a lot of low-end stuff is increasingly manufactured in places like Vietnam and such, as their labor costs are lower.
There was gobs of cheap stuff before the Chinese started to dominate the market. VW parts from Brazil in the 70s and 80s (and later) flooded the market. Same for shoes.
I could go on. But the simple reality is that the global market demands a wide range of prices, and places like China deliver. The golden age of very well built American products is long over; low cost products from overseas producers were a key factor in the disinflationary environment of the past 40 years.
Like most change, it’s got its pros and cons.
“Mom, can we have a RAV4 at home?”
“We already have a RAV4 at home.”
At home: these.
Does China produce some cheap junk? Yes
Does China produce some decent quality products? Yes
Do I want to support Chinese slave/child labor? No
Jumping on the China bashing bandwagon…
I’ve heard it stated and can’t disagree, although I’m very, very far from an expert, that China can produce things to spec or copy them, but does little in the design area.
From my very limited point of view, product quality from China is declining, not improving. 5 years ago I’d buy something, it said China on it and I thought, oh, made in China. Today I avoid, admittedly with little success, those same products, they seem very failure prone.