Mega-platform Strategies and Product-Architecture-Defining Competition: The Potential Impacts of Chinese Automakers’ Challenges

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At the beginning of the 21st century, the new frontier of global automobile market, as emerging BRIC, continues to expand. Comparing with the slowing down of Indian, Russian and Brazilian markets, the steady expansion of Chinese markets show that China might has a different growth aspect as an internal growth with rapid structural change. By focusing on the strategic change of the Chinese local automakers, in this article we attempt a primary analysis of the potential impacts of Mega-platform strategies by shedding light on the challenge facing by the Chinese local automakers. We find that ongoing profitability competition is the real reason why many of China’s local automakers have strategically shifted to the Mega-platform strategy, after VW launched the MQB production in China. Furthermore, such strategic motives of Chinese local automakers might give a potential impacts on the product-architecture-defining competition taking place among those global leading automakers such as Nissan’s CMF (Common Module Family), Mazda’s CA (Common Architecture) and Toyota’s TNGA (Toyota New Global Architecture), as sublimating the VW method of MQB to a global standard using the existing cooperative relationships with mega suppliers who joined VW’s MQB.