Andrew Singer Talks About China and America
Vol. 3, Issue 29
The New Vehicle (R)evolution: China Ruling the Earth’s Roads
Electric vehicles are taking the world by storm. Well, most of the world. With the glaring exception of the United States of America, these vehicles are fast rolling out of factories and off ships near and far as waves of tomorrow today. Chinese companies are leading this global (r)evolution, and with new technology, innovation, economies of scale, and quality advancing at lightning speed, the surviving Chinese companies are likely to remain the entrenched leaders of the future.
BYD Assembly Line China (www.supercarblondie.com)
BYD (“Build Your Dreams”), Wuling, Tesla, Li Auto, and Geely are the top five of 50± electric vehicle companies in China. Of these, BYD far and away dominates China and has surpassed American Tesla as the largest EV maker in the world. Xiaomi Auto, the latest venture by the popular smartphone maker, is today’s sexy start-up darling of the country.
Continuing 2024 trends, between January and April, 2025, electric cars made up 43% of domestic sales in China and accounted for 33% of vehicle exports. More than four in ten cars being sold in China thus do not rely solely or at all on gasoline for power. “Chinese EVs [are forecasted] to make up 80 per cent of the mainland’s car market by 2030.”
Chinese companies are seeding the planet with battery electric (BEV) and plug-in hybrid (PHEV) vehicles. They are becoming household names to billions of non-Chinese people, including, BYD everywhere, plus Neta, Xpeng, Ora, Deepal, and Jaecoo in Southeast Asia; Chery, GAC, BAIC, NIO, Neta, XPeng, Zeekr, and Avatr in Africa and the Middle East; and Chery, Geely, SAIC, Changan, and Haval in Central and South America.
And yet, this popular, transformative field is mostly ignored or maligned here between the 25th and 49th parallels east of the Pacific and west of the Atlantic Oceans.
Nikkei Asia
The Chinese EV industry is supported by the Chinese government. Of the top ten Chinese companies receiving the most government subsidies in 2024, five are EV-related, including electric battery maker, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited, better known as CATL, as well as BYD, Great Wall Motors, SAIC Motor, and Guangzhou Automobile Group.
The Chinese EV industry is cutthroat. Vicious domestic price competition and pressured profit margins mean that most of the existing EV companies will eventually disappear. Only three (BYD, Li Auto, and Seres) are considered profitable today.
The Chinese EV industry is dynamic. As the overall market continues to demonstrate strong growth, PHEV’s are capturing a bigger slice of the pie. BYD itself now sells more PHEV’s than BEV’s and is focusing its future efforts on these “mixed fuel” vehicles. As one commentator notes,
“The future of clean transport may not be a binary choice between internal combustion and full electric, but rather a spectrum of solutions tailored to regional needs and infrastructure….As climate goals intensify and consumer behaviors evolve, flexibility may prove valuable” (emphasis in original).
Seventeen (17) million EV’s were sold around the world in 2024, with three out of every four such vehicles being made by a Chinese company.
Nineteen percent (19%) of cars sold around the globe are BEV and PHEV sales, and Chinese companies account for 17/20 top-selling PHEV vehicles.
China has approximately twenty (20) public EV chargers installed for every one (1) in the U.S., and Europe has deployed 4x the number of chargers that America has. (Source: Washington Post).
In this environment, fears of cascading, domestic automotive industry collapses outside China are growing as Chinese EV’s take over Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and South America. Economic and in some cases security concerns have led to European Union and Brazilian tariffs and other restrictions.
American oil refinery (Patrick Hendry on Unsplash)
Now to the elephant in the room, America.
The United States of President Trump and the GOP are going in a decidedly different direction. Electric vehicles and related technology are anathema (notwithstanding that U.S. sales hit a national record of more than 1.3 million electric vehicles in 2024). The government’s energies (policy, rhetorical, and regulatory) are unabashedly designed to keep petrochemicals king long into America’s future.
This is a stand that often seems more ideological and political than economic. President Trump has accused the Biden Administration of perpetuating an “Electric Car Hoax,” and he has further “suggested that promoting electric vehicles ‘was the idea of the Radical Left Fascists, Marxists, & Communists.’"
As a result, previously-enacted and in many cases already deployed, massive American government investments (subsidies, tax credits, and messaging) to promote battery and electric vehicle development and production, to build out of charging infrastructure, and to encourage purchases of BEV’s and PHEV’s are being ridiculed and scrapped. Some of these actions are legal; others have been ruled illegal.
The American government may be swimming energetically against the tide with these efforts and a de facto ban of Chinese electric passenger vehicles, but the cart has already left the barn. BYD is here and CATL hopes to be soon.
BYD. If you travel through the Oakland International Airport and ride a shuttle bus, it may be on one of five, new BYD K9MD buses. BYD has operated a $250 million, 550,000 sq. ft. production facility in Lancaster, California for more than a decade. This facility has delivered “hundreds of battery-electric buses to fleets across the world,” including airports and public transportation systems across America from Los Angeles to Cape Cod.
CATL. The battery maker has an agreement with Ford to license its technology to produce low-cost, lithium-iron batteries at a new Ford factory being built in Michigan. It is controversial project that may as yet never come to fruition, let alone profitability.
Photo by Sandra Tan at www.unsplash.com
America’s electric vehicle pioneer, Tesla, is not doing well for political and economic reasons, the latter having to do with cost, features, quality, and reliability. Its sales are 1) cratering in Europe where the market is otherwise expanding by leaps and bounds, 2) challenged in its second largest market China, and 3) declining at home.
Imagine what would happen to Tesla if/when Chinese personal BEV’s and PHEV’s ever make it to our shores in significant numbers. None other than Elon Musk himself said at the beginning of 2024 that "‘If there are no trade barriers established, [Chinese automakers] will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world,…’" (he subsequently changed his tune to oppose tariffs). He is right to be concerned. It is even harder to compete when the industry is a governmental pariah.
A personal note. After recently spending a few weeks riding in Chinese EV’s (like the one above) and walking the streets of Zhengzhou in Central China, I can attest to one dramatic impact of the significant uptake of BEV and PHEV vehicles…the decrease in noise pollution. Walking down a sidewalk, standing on a street corner, crossing intersections--all during the height of the business day with scooters, trikes, cars, buses, trucks, and more streaming to and fro, you can carry on a conversation, pause to have a thought, and be struck repeatedly by the unnerving quiet in a bustling city of 12,000,000+ people.
Interesting personal and factual information to what we have been ingesting since Trump and Elon took over.