Range Rover Evoque

Make
Land Rover
Segment
SUV

China is a country that we rarely hear about when it comes to cars. Aside from news about how China has the world's largest auto market, the only tidbits of information that we get is when some Chinese millionaire crashes their Ferrari or when another Chinese manufacturer builds a blatant copy of a Land Rover or Tesla. So it may come as a surprise to some readers to learn the scale of the Chinese auto industry. As it turns out, China produces more cars than any other country on earth.

But this fact doesn't do China's auto industry any justice. To put things in perspective, if the U.S. and Japan put their auto industries together, they wouldn't even skim China's automobile production numbers. In fact, if the U.S., the second largest automobile producer in the world, were to double its car production, it would still make 300,000 fewer cars per year than China does. So why do automotive journalists completely glaze over the world's largest auto industry? Part of the reason for the lack of coverage, aside from the obvious fact that Chinese cars hardly ever make it west, is that the only Chinese cars that are reviewed tend to get ripped apart by crash test ratings and western competition.

However, tides are changing. Chinese car companies may have been able to get by with subpar offerings in the past, but as China has gotten richer, it has begun snatching up Cadillacs, Buicks, Ferraris, and Bentleys by the boatload. This goes to show that there's a huge potential for China's auto industry to join the rest of the world, not only by building quality cars, but also by creating a supercar. At the 2016 Geneva Motor Show, a Chinese company called Techrules unveiled a concept supercar called the TREV. For Techrules, TREV is an acronym for Turbine-Recharged Electric Vehicle, the name of the turbine-based recharging system housed inside the car.

Apparently the TREV is supposed to be able to attain 1,030 bhp and inhale tiny wisps of fuel at the rate of 1,500 mpg. As outlandish as these numbers sound (we'll say this until testing confirms otherwise), the TREV was only supposed to be a gorgeous model that would call attention to the possibilities of the technology. But that got us thinking, why shouldn't Techrules build the TREV as a supercar? It obviously has the technological aspirations to try and build something on the cutting edge of technology, so why not make a car that would get the other side of the world to turn its head and see China as a capable automobile maker? Most countries with an auto industry also have supercars to back up the talking.

America has the Ford GT, Germany has the Porsche 918, Japan has the Lexus LFA, Sweden has Koenigsegg, the UK has McLaren, and Italy has…well take your pick. Even South Korea is planning to build a supercar that will earn respect from the rest of the world, and as the company furthest into this pursuit, Techrules should step ahead and build the TREV to represent China. It wouldn't need to attain the wild performance figures that it initially quoted, just try its best to build a competitor that could run with the rest of the world's supercars. After all, the country with the world's largest auto industry should give its cars an identity that the world could relate to by means of a halo car. Only then will enthusiasts place China on the automotive map.