If Paris Fashion Week is where silhouettes are set, then the Singapore Motorshow is where the future of mobility gets its fittings
Held this past weekend over at the Suntec Convention and Exhibition Centre, this iteration of the Singapore Motorshow was the largest it’s been in a while, sprawling across four exhibition levels and spanning over 21,000 square metres. Over four days, it served up a tidy snapshot of where the market is driving towards: 200-odd cars to compare in one sweep, with more than 100 EVs and 60 hybrids jostling for attention (and just 40 ICE models holding the fort). Here are the takeaways that mattered the most, from electrification going mainstream (and commercial), prestige players arriving in town, to concept cars that reminded us that the motorshow is still, delightfully, a place to dream.
The Chinese are here to stake their claim on the luxury automotive market here
Hongqi’s Singapore debut felt far less like a soft launch, and more like the Chinese planting a flag here (quite literally). The 1958-born marque (its name translates to “Red Flag”) made its official Singapore debut at the Motorshow under Eurokars Group, positioning itself as an “Eastern Luxury” alternative rather than a European echo, though the models bear some resemblance to Rolls-Royce models.
The brand unveiled the all-electric E-HS9, of which first deliveries are expected from Q2 this year onwards, alongside the Golden Sunflower range’s Guoli and Guoya, its ultra-luxury calling cards.
The more interesting question is who it will win over, here in the Singapore market: early adopters bored of the usual suspects, collectors who like their luxury with cultural gravitas, or perhaps buyers who enjoy being first to spot the next status signal?
It’s not just a buyer’s market
For all the talk of order books and COE maths, the Singapore Motorshow still knows how to serve up a little theatre. Mercedes-Benz rolled in with the Concept AMG GT XX, fresh from a brutal endurance programme at Italy’s Nardo track, where it set 25 long-distance records and clocked 40,075km (roughly the Earth’s equatorial circumference) in under eight days. And the best part for us? They didn’t clean it up nor make it show-worthy; the car sat there wearing its grit and grime from the rigorous testing, all in its full glory. We hear that the new AMG GT is 90 to 95 per cent based off this example, too.
BMW countered with the Skytop, which was first a design study, but now a real, strictly limited 50-unit run (with one unit right here on Singapore roads). BMW proved that a concept can still make the leap from fantasy to driveway–if you’re the collecting sort, that is.
The EV wave has stopped being a wave
We were already expecting this, but if you walked into the exhibition halls expecting an “EV corner”, you would have left realising it was the other way round: petrol cars were the minority at their own party. More than 80 per cent of the vehicles on display were electric or hybrid, and it wasn’t confined to the usual lifestyle silhouettes either. BYD’s booth, for instance, had the BYD Shark sitting right alongside its other hybrid and EV highlights, a hint that electrification is spreading by body type, and not just badge.
What’s more telling is how the sales pitch has matured. Range anxiety is getting edged out by a new bragging right: charging speeds, and “brains”. Mercedes-Benz’s all-electric CLA leans on an 800-volt architecture, toting up to 808km of range and charges up to 325km in just 10 minutes of DC fast charging, and there are whispers of a Cat A COE-friendly variant to be expected later in Q1 this year. Zeekr, meanwhile, is already talking 900v with the 9X SUV. Xpeng’s booth was quite the AI thesis with the roll-out iof its IRON humanoid robot and touting 2,250 TOPS on the Next P7, while previewing a Cat A-targeted G6 Air.
