Suzuki to cut car development time to 24 months to compete with China

The Japanese automaker has decided to challenge the Chinese auto industry; Suzuki Motor will reduce the development period of cars to 24 months in order to produce cars twice as fast as now, Bloomberg writes.

This will allow us to catch up with Chinese companies in terms of assembly and market entry rates by 2030. Suzuki currently takes 40 to 48 months to complete this.

CEO Toshihiro Suzuki acknowledges that Chinese automakers are exceptionally fast, and the challenge for the Japanese is to figure out how to go even faster to keep up.

BYD, Leapmotor and Xiaomi are stepping up competition with short development cycles, software-first design and advanced battery technologies. This is forcing global brands to actively restructure their production systems.

Suzuki expects to increase production capacity to four million units by 2030. This year the figure will be less than three million cars.