The Chinese auto market has been under scrutiny for allowing cheap copies of popular foreign cars in the past. Violating intellectual property clause, several local manufacturers have resorted to use design of luxury cars to develop new models to attract customers. It has been noticed that Chinese car manufacturers are mostly fond of Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover's Range Rover SUV and its design. In one such latest case, a small car which appears identical to the Range Rover Autobiography edition has surfaced on social media.

The video of the Chinese copy of Range Rover SUV has since gone viral and has sparked an online debate whether the Chinese auto industry should be embarrassed for resorting to such cloning of foreign cars. The videos shows a white small SUV influenced by the latest Range Rover design with its front face, taillights, interior and even the character lines appearing identical to the popular luxury car.

The name of the carmaker is not visible in the video, nor does the user who shared it revealed any details. However, going by Chinese carmaker's track record of copying design from other car brands, netizens are not too amused at the latest cloning venture. One of the users wrote, “Why should they? They can't afford a Range Rover." Others were critical with comments like ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness’, or ‘Is copyright the right to copy?’ Some of the users saw the funny side to it. One wrote, “They did not copy, they just made it cheaper," while another quipped “Looks like a Strange Rover!".

This is not the first time a Chinese carmaker has tried to copy design from popular foreign brands, particularly Range Rover. In 2019, a Chinese court ordered a local carmaker to stop selling a cheap copies of the Range Rover Evoque. Jaguar Land Rover had earlier won a case in 2016 against a local carmaker for copying the design of its popular SUV.

Not only cars, Chinese brands have also been called out for copying design of official website of popular foreign carmakers. Last year, an emerging Chinese EV maker Xpeng came up with its website which looked identical to the official website of Tesla. It was criticised for copying Tesla's design to gain attention from customers.

Range Rover: Price in India, engine, features

Range Rover is priced more than ₹2 crore in India and is one of the most expensive luxury SUVs one can buy. Powered by a 3.0-litre diesel engine, it can generate 346 bhp of maximum power and 700 Nm of peak torque. The engine comes tuned to an 8-speed automatic gearbox unit. The SUV is capable of hitting a top speed of 234 kmph and can sprint from zero 100 kmph in just 6.3 seconds.

Range Rover SUV comes with features like 13.1-inch floating touchscreen infotainment screen, a fully digital instrument cluster, Head-Up Display (HuD), multi-zone climate control, rear-seat entertainment screen, 35-speaker Meridian sound system and third-row seats which are available only on this variant.

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