The 2024 Geneva Motor Show has been significantly "shrunk" with only 5 mainstream car brands participating.

The 2024 Geneva Motor Show will officially open on February 26, local time in Switzerland. This will also be the first time that the Geneva Motor Show returns to Geneva, Switzerland, after the 2020 epidemic. But like the Munich Motor Show, Tokyo Motor Show and other well-known international auto shows, the Geneva Motor Show has also shown a significant shrinkage in scale.

The official website of the Geneva Motor Show shows that as of January 27, there are 33 exhibitors at the Geneva Motor Show, of which there are only 5 well-known car brands, namely BYD and MG from China, Renault and Dacia owned by Renault of France, and Lucid, a new car-making force in the United States. Because of this, the 2024 Geneva Motor Show was called the deserted one in history by some media.

The first Geneva Motor Show was held in 1924, marking its 100th anniversary. In the past few decades, the Geneva Motor Show, together with the Frankfurt Motor Show in Germany, the Detroit Auto Show in the United States, the Tokyo Motor Show in Japan, and the Paris Auto Show in France, have been among the five major auto shows in the world. In addition, the Geneva Motor Show is usually the first large-scale international auto show held every year, and it is also the only large-scale auto show held annually in Europe.

Due to the new crown epidemic in 2020, the Geneva Motor Show will continue to be suspended. In 2023, the Geneva Motor Show will resume and the venue will be transferred to Doha, Qatar.

Before the epidemic, the scale of the Geneva Motor Show and the number of exhibitors had continued to shrink. Data from the Geneva Motor Show Foundation shows that the number of visitors to the Geneva Motor Show has dropped from 720,000 in 2008 to 602,000 in 2019. Before the announcement of the cancellation of the 2020 Geneva Motor Show, many car companies such as Jaguar Land Rover, Peugeot Citroën, Volvo, Mitsubishi, and Tesla announced that they would not participate in the show.

In addition, the Tokyo Motor Show, Munich Auto Show, etc. have shown signs of shrinking in scale and deepening localization. For example, at the 2023 Munich Auto Show, non-European local car companies such as Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, General Motors, and Kia were continuously absent. The STELLANTIS Group, which was formed by the merger of the French PSA Group and the Italian FCA Group, also did not appear in the official booth map. German local car companies, represented by Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW, are still the "protagonists" of the Munich Auto Show.

In comparison, the Beijing Auto Show and Shanghai Auto Show have shown a strong trend in overtaking the traditional five major auto shows in the world in the past two years. According to official data from the Shanghai Auto Show, 1,413 vehicles were on display in the vehicle exhibition area; 93 world premiere vehicles (including 28 global premiere vehicles by multinational companies), 64 concept cars; 271 new energy models (including 186 new energy models from Chinese auto companies), 513 new energy exhibition cars, and 906,000 visitors.

From the perspective of influence, the Shanghai Auto Show in April last year had a certain meaning of "all nations coming to North Korea". Half of BMW's board of directors and the heads of its main business lines chartered two planes to come to China; Volkswagen also chartered a plane to bring board members of the group, Volkswagen brand, Audi, and Porsche to Shanghai. Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai Motor (41.23,0.01,0.01%) also have more than 100 management and business teams participating in the Shanghai Auto Show. Some employees from Japanese car companies even lay on the ground, holding measuring tapes to carefully measure door openings, front and rear overhangs and other data.

Many management personnel from joint venture automakers and foreign-funded supply chain companies told reporters that last year's Shanghai Auto Show subverted foreign executives' views on companies. After watching the Shanghai Auto Show, foreign management changed many of their previous inherent views, and some projects progressed much more smoothly.

"In the past 100 years, the center of the world's automobiles has been Europe, Detroit in the United States, and Japan and South Korea. But in the era of smart electric vehicles, China and Silicon Valley in the United States may replace the traditional powers and become the core of the new world." A R&D executive of a car company told reporters.