[Sebring]

That's crazy if it indeed happened, because MG has spent millions setting up a factory here. There are not full imports. It will only hurt business

Originally Posted by vishy76

This has already happened. A MG Hector has been vandalised in Delhi already after it was brought home from the showroom. Chinese or not, no one has the right to damage someone else's property like this. The owner has bought the asset using his own money, not the taxpayer's.

[turbo]

Originally Posted by Hayek

We are drifting off topic - but should recognise that the bulk of the value of any product goes to the shareholders and those who designed it - not to those who assemble it. Hence whether the MG Hector has 100% Indian components or not is irrelevant, it is a Chinese product. Made by a State owned Chinese company. And the Communist Party of China run government and the People’s Liberation Army directly benefit when one buys it. The same applies for lots of other brands - Volvo, Pirelli, Oppo, Vivo, One Plus, Xiaomi, Haier, Lenovo (including the ThinkPad) etc.

Exactly! And this is a concept that people very conveniently choose to overlook.

India buys 8 crore mobiles per year. Even if we assume a margin of 1000 Rs per mobile, thats 8000 crore earning. Per year. Thats 8000 crore gone from the forex reserves. And I dont even want to start on fiscal deficit and balance of payments and what not.

[1.2TSI7DSG]

While the intent is good to develop value-adding manufacturing technology in India, I am not in support of a closed economy. I remember during my stint with M&M, the amount of innovation the Indian component manufacturers (rane, Motherson, etc) used to develop to fight off the cheaper chinese counterparts. Needless to say, there are millions of Indian jobs which depend on Chinese supply chains across the globe (shipping, trade, finance and the likes).

To be cheeky, wherever your mobiles/laptops are assembled, it will always be powered by a core Chinese LiOn battery.

[ashis89]

Originally Posted by Hayek

We are drifting off topic - but should recognise that the bulk of the value of any product goes to the shareholders and those who designed it - not to those who assemble it.

+100

For a company with Chinese origin, the biggest chunk of the profit will be repatriated to China and that is what matters the most.

For example: A Tata Harrier might be using a sunroof manufactured by a Chinese company. Assuming sales price, sale of 1 Harrier will add 1L in revenue for the sunroof OEM but will add 20L in revenue to Tata's bucket. If we assume that Webasto (a German company) contract manufactures its sunroof in China, then the addition to Chinese economy would be even lower.

EDIT: A second thought that came to my mind. Isn't China one of the biggest market for JLR group?

[padmrajravi]

Completely agree with the view that the biggest benefactors of a company doing well is its majority shareholders. When compared to that, the value from the economic activity at the destination country in assembling or selling is trivial.

That said, I think we should not discuss this in the Hector review thread, What we are discussing has nothing to do with the engineering of the car or its capabilities. Let this thread stay as a one-stop point for potential customers to know about the utility provided by the car. Ultimately this is still a free market and everyone will choose the one which gives him the biggest value. This discussion is best suited for the India-China rivalry thread.

[vgsr]

More importantly, we need to distinguish between Chinese products and Chinese brands. While there may be case for avoiding Chinese products, if a Chinese brand is being manufactured in India , its a different ball game.
Manufacturing in India leads to creation of jobs, directly and indirectly and revenue for the government. Can you imagine the loss of jobs and revenue if MG, for one shut their factory.?
And lets us not fool ourselves that American or other products are not Chinese . The only thing American in a an Apple product is the brand, the everything inside is Chinese.

Originally Posted by Reinhard

Trust me, I don't like China. So that's out of the way.

To get the facts straightened - China invaded India in 1962 after the "Forward Policy" from India sent soldiers without full fledged policy & planning for any Chinese reaction in areas that were originally just "left aside". There was never an agreed border in Aksai Chin in those days after independence. At the end of hostilities, the Chinese returned what was their controlled part of NEFA (Arunachal Pradesh today) after a pretty voluntarily declared cease-fire when India was already on back-foot in '62. Look from the Chinese perspective and they were of the opinion that India tried to occupy a part of their land that was never settled with the British due to other priorities. (Of course, I want the Aksai Chin region of Ladakh together with Pangong Tse to be part of India, no question about it.) India's border disputes with China & Pakistan are very different. Pakistan's claims are criminal pretty much. China's on the other hand are complicated since a long time.

Mod Note - Please quote ONLY the relevant bits of a post. Quoting a full, long post inconveniences our mobile readers. Thanks!

[JediKnight]

Originally Posted by vgsr

..The only thing American in a an Apple product is the brand, the everything inside is Chinese.

Not true. As a semiconductor industry insider and having worked directly with Apple as a client, i can tell you Apple is as american as it gets. All the design/IP/software is US. That is where are the smarts are and the value add is. Most of the semiconductor comes from outside China. China mostly only assembles the phones.

[Kosfactor]

Originally Posted by JediKnight

Not true. As a semiconductor industry insider and having worked directly with Apple as a client, i can tell you Apple is as american as it gets. All the design/IP/software is US. That is where are the smarts are and the value add is. Most of the semiconductor comes from outside China. China mostly only assembles the phones.

Lets take a cheap phone with Qualcomm processor - the chips are designed in US of A and manufactured by TSMC or Samsung just like Apple`s chips either in Taiwan or Korea , the software is Android from US, everything is run by google from US, display is from Samsung (Korean), Camera is form Sony (Japanese).

So my Redmi phone is not really all that Chinese although its made in China, just like an iPhone.

[wheelguy]

Hector's vs rivals' sales performance since its launch in India.

Source

[fhdowntheline]

Slogans like "Digital Strike" made in public also dont help the cause. I dont understand why so much frenzy has to be built around this matter. If at all you want to make a noteworthy impact via Atmanirbhar, beware that the road ahead is a long one. Let's not start with a bang and end with a whimper.
Theatrics cannot make you design and develop a microprocessor. They can only help you burn it on the street.

[John]

It just struck me that this car is so aptly named, considering the country of origin!

The Cambridge dictionary confirms the meaning of Hector as, “to talk and behave towards someone in a loud and unpleasantly forceful way, especially in order to get them to act or think as you want”

[sunnsood]

Till 1991, we were just boycotting the entire world (under the pretence of saving domestic industry). We all saw how that ended.

Sorry to say but I don't believe in boycotting anything. The end user of a car, a taxpayer (paying 28% GST plus other taxes like registration ), is the king in todays world and knows what is good & bad. If MG is bad for all the reasons provided in this discussion, then customers will punish it just like Chevy or Skoda or VW.

if we really want to punish China(current issues) or America(biggest bully in the world) or Germany(hitler) or Japan(world war 2) or Pakistan(everything) or Bangladesh(link), we need to be better than them.

Sad part is no one wants to talk about how to beat these countries in the best things they do. Boycott is easy. Its cheap politics and gets all the headlines. Being the "mangalyaan" and making entire world take notice is so difficult.

I hope we take the later path, ask everyone to come here, invest, innovate and reverse engineer. We learn from them and beat them in their game.

Sorry for the off topic but this entire review has become off topic. We are not talking about cars anymore.

[coolkurt]

MG sold 2105 units in July 2020. So their cars are still very much in demand. It'll be interesting to see how many buyers moved to the Plus.

[Cessna182]

Originally Posted by coolkurt

MG sold 2105 units in July 2020. So their cars are still very much in demand. It'll be interesting to see how many buyers moved to the Plus.

I happened to check out a Hector recently and I cannot believe that people in India are still buying this over competitors like XUV, Harrier and even the Seltos or Creta. The Hector looks and feels like that mid range Chinese phone from Realme that looks superb initially, works great, but you realize within a year that the battery is not charging as it should, the bloatware is sucking up more power than it is suppised to and the camera pictures that you saw on the advertisement were taken with an iPhone or Pixel or Samsung. You have to replace the product within a year, possibly with a better specced Xiaomi, and thus the Chinese revenue gravy train continues.

The plastics and seat fabrics in the Hector, while looking fine, do not appear to be from global makes known for long term durability. The touch screen- well what do I say. I find it amusing that in a world where even US registered companies like Facebook and Google are facing tough scrutiny about data security laws, people in India are okay with a Chinese device listening to them all the time. The rest of the car? Well the features are great. The sunroof is great. Powered tailgate is amazing. But is that enough to justify its price tag of 20 lakhs on the road in Gujarat where I live? I don't know. Only people with a genuine affection for bling, cheap cosmetics, 7 kmpl (that's what the owner told me) petrol FE and a company allied to the Chinese army would pay close to 20 lakhs for this car.

Personally, I'll buy a used fortuner, a new Harrier/Seltos/XUV type product that uses decent hardware from reliable manufacturers, and I am ready to compromise on the bling and the taint of supporting a product that is made by a company with ties to the Chinese Military that recently murdered many Indian soldiers.

This is not nationalism, it is just pragmatism. You don't buy a product from your enemy if you can get an alternative. There's no point supporting China with more Indian wealth when much better alternatives are available. No offense to the owners and lovers.

[fhdowntheline]

Originally Posted by Cessna182

I happened to check out a Hector recently and I cannot believe that people in India are still buying this over competitors like XUV, Harrier and even the Seltos or Creta. The Hector looks and feels like that mid range Chinese phone from Realme that looks superb initially, works great, but you realize within a year that the battery is not charging

I dont think there's any reason to believe that Hectors will run into problems in a year or two of their ownership, certainly not the way it is being perceived in your post.

When I see our own desi-videshi collaborations (MSIL) dishing out cars with the same average level cabin product quality, not to mention shoddy levels of safety, I think we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Like any other car, the Hector has its merits and demerits. I believe it is a fair ask in terms of price for what it offers- a more than averagely spacious car with creature comforts and adequately capable performance and safety tech that is at par with the rest of the field.