i'm in southern china... and today i was in a "bigger" city (fuzhou). i stopped at toyota there since it's toyota, and was glad to see a prius! a silver 2006 MIC (made in china) prius. very cool. too bad the battery was totally dead on the display model. no gas in it either. they totally don't know how to care for it or anything. i went to their back lot and saw their other prius, black. it was also brand new, and dirty/dusty (tsktsk). anyway, i spent like 30 minutes explaining in my chinglish how to work a prius and what the buttons were to the sales person. i took pictures, but my internet connection is way too slow to bother. maybe when i'm back on dsl in the states... ha. it was cool.
Thats pretty funny. I was in Taiwan recently, and kept my eyes open on the streets for an Priuses, but I did not see any.
While I was visiting Hong Kong recently, I saw several Prius's. In fact I saw a few Toyota van type vehicles that were Hybrids.
Reminds me of a friend who told me that the cars sold in China are nowhere near the cars we have here even though they share the same name. e.g. an Audi A6 over in China is totally different from the A6 here even though it looks the same. The plastics used in the Chinese A6 is cheaper and so are the switches.
gee jonathan, didnt you know china is famous for counterfeit items... that was a counterfeit audi you friend saw!!
haha. Nah, it was a "real" one sold by Audi, not by one of those chinese manufacturers like Geely, Chery, LandWind, Zhonghua and goodness knows how many others.
The most blunt copy of automobile exterior design has been the HONDA CR-V vs LAIBAO SR-V See for yourself <_< http://paultan.org/archives/2004/12/05/china-pirates/
Most of the foreign stuff in China are counterfeit. I would not be surprised that prius is another counterfeit. It may look the same from outside, but you won't even get close to quality as the real stuff.
actually, Mercedes, VW, and BMW all do the same thing, what happens is they produce the same vehicle, Mercedes C and E series, BMW 3 & 5, VW passat etc . .. the ones made in china are only sold in China. Technically speaking, they're the same as teh ones here, but they're made in china so they won't sell them here yet. China is still trying to shed the image of being cheap and undesirable.. . much like japan in the 80s and Korea in the past decade. BMW dealers actually sell imported 5 series and made in china 5 series at the same dealer . . . the MIC ones are bout 4000-5000 dollars cheaper, thats A LOT of money considering the GDP per capita in china.
ummm im not quite sure that counterfeiting is all that bad either. when i worked at intel, our motto was "copy exactly" you find a process that works and duplicate it as closely as possible to insure that the final product is a good as the prototype you created. i think china shows a huge amount of discipline and manufacturing integrity with its ability to make duplicates. usually it takes a design expert from the company in question to identify fakes. now patent infringement cases are obviously a different story, but good quality verses poor quality i believe is designed into the product since nearly everything comes from china these days anyway
See the thing is, for a car manufacturer to sell cars in China, they must partner up with a chinese company (e.g. GM and Shanghai Maple or Honda and Dongfeng). Next, they must then share ALL their technology with their chinese partner (wow, what a freebie to them eh). Next, all cars imported to China must be approved by the chinese gov't themselves. Also, cars sold there must have the name of both companies. E.g. Dongfeng-Honda CR-V (yes, chinese partner first). (This is taken out of an issue of CarGuide magazine). That's before all this copycat comes around like the Fortuna which is a total 4Runner copy.
haha, sorry, but i gotta say.. 1) the plural of prius is prii!!!!!!! come on =) and 2) china has a legit prius factory. that's old news. these were actual prii that i saw, made by china toyota! but the display model inside really sucked (non functional) and the one in their lot in the back was terribly dirty. what a disgrace to the toyota name...ha! in my city (putian), nike has all of its sweatshops. foreigners can't go in them!! and most are "contract companies" working for nike. haha, so everywhere there are fake nike (fike) shoes on sale. you can get jordans for less than 10 bucks... but who knows the quality. this is china! :-X i also heard some stores export fikes abroad! so u might be wearing fikes made in putian, china!! =P
This is *exactly* why Toyota's intent to move Prius production to China disturbs the hell out of me. I got pooh-poohed for this in a discussion way back, but here's more evidence what'll happen to prius build quality. . _H*
