How significant is the arrival of Chinese cars in Europe? “There’s a complete earthquake coming. And the magnitude of earthquake is not known yet.” And he should know. This is Alfredo Altavilla, who once ran Fiat Chrysler in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Now he’s a senior advisor to BYD. So he’s seen the industry from the Western side and the Chinese.

He’d basically retired after Fiat-Chrysler. So first I ask him why he came back – surely he has no need of the money? Because it’s interesting, he says.

“The manufacturing and product development at BYD is unique. When I tried with Sergio Marchionne [the late FCA boss] to cut the vehicle development time there, it took us a lot of effort and money, and we managed to go from 33 months to 28. What a a remarkable achievement: congratulations, gold medals everyone.

“But BYD do a car from scratch in less than 18 months. This is just unbelievable. The number of vehicles they will be launching in the next 24 months looks unreal to an old turkey like me.”

TopGear.com asks how BYD people do it. Do they take more risks? Cut more corners? “I have not seen the BYD development process taking more risks. There’s probably the attitude of working in high tech environments. They are the single largest supplier of components to Apple. So they are used to coming up with innovation at a faster pace than any traditional manufacturer does.”

But consumer electronics aren’t as reliable as a car needs to be. “The perceived quality of BYD cars is at the level that a traditional manufacturer would’ve reached after decades. The designer of BYD cars is Wolfgang Egger. Wolfgang was with me, as the designer with me at Alfa. Without the badge would you ever say this is a Chinese car? No.”

And, he says, they simply work hard. “It’s truly 24/7. The attitude is ‘nothing is impossible’. This also provides a lot of confidence to engineers to come up with new ideas.”

In other ways BYD is unique. “Fundamentally, the strategy is to become a European manufacturer. And this is totally different from what a lot of other Chinese OEMs want to do. They want to assemble cars in Europe but remain Chinese. BYD wants to become a local manufacturer with local R&D, local product management. And this avoids tariffs.”

His job is to set up the organisation to do this, and sell the cars. I suggest if the company is so interesting, and so scary to the existing European car makers, he must find recruitment easy. He replies instantly: “Jesus, this has been the easiest undertaking in my life. I’ve got hundreds of CVs coming from every single manufacturer, which tells you a lot, not only about the willingness of people to embrace a new challenge.”

He points out it also means they’re scared for their current jobs. “It tells you how they’re living inside the current European manufacturers.

“Ask yourself how the hell MG got four per cent market share in two years, how the hell BYD can become one of the key players in Europe?”

He supplies his own pithy answer. The Germans especially, he says, are frozen, thinking rather than acting. “They keep on strategising in their heads without any concrete answer.”