How China’s electric boom left Western car companies asleep at the wheel
David Tyfield, professor of political economy at Lancaster University and author of the 2019 book Liberalism 2.0 and the rise of Chinatells me that there is “no future for the electric vehicle that does not have a significant, if not disproportionate, Chinese presence.” Chinese companies are simply too far ahead in the entire electric vehicle supply chain: from the minerals to the batteries to the Building the cars.”
Policymakers around the world are concerned about China’s ambitions to control entire supply chains – for example, the minerals in electric vehicle batteries. It is claimed that such Chinese dominance threatens individual economies and the (Western-led) global innovation system.
“Global markets are now flooded with cheaper electric cars. And their price is kept artificially low by huge state subsidies,” complained EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen earlier this year.
Speech in Beijing Last monthShortly after the EU launched an anti-subsidy investigation into China, Valdis Dombrovskis, EU trade commissioner, said the trading bloc was “open to competition” in the electric vehicle sector, but “competition must be fair.”
Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the China Passenger Car Association, responded to the import investigation: called on the EU to end the economic saber rattling. “I strongly reject the EU assessment of China’s new energy vehicle exports, not because of the huge national subsidies, but because of the strong competitiveness of China’s industrial chain under full market competition,” Cui wrote on his personal WeChat account, repeating quite a bit Security the official statement views.
Be Chinese language blog is essential reading for automotive industry observers. In addition to insider comments, sales figures are regularly published. On September 24, Cui reported that China’s cumulative automobile exports – electric vehicles and internal combustion engines, including trucks – reached 3.22 million units from January to August 2023, with exports growing 65 percent and pushing Japan from its top spot as the world’s largest automobile exporter .
“From January to August 2023, 1.08 million new energy vehicles were exported, a year-on-year increase of 82 percent,” Cui wrote. Almost all of them, around 1.04 million, were passenger cars, an increase of 90 percent compared to the previous year.
First the EU, then the USA
BYD now delivers cars to Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Australia, Norway, Great Britain, Germany, Brazil, Costa Rica and Mexico. It is already the best-selling EV brand in Singapore. The company has an electric bus division in the United States, but no official sales channel for its cars.
“The US market is not the focus at the moment,” says Stella Li, senior vice president at BYD. said Bloomberg earlier this year. She said President Joe Biden’s “new green deal,” the Inflation Reduction Act, “could slow the adoption of electric vehicles in the U.S.” by making affordable electric vehicles inaccessible to American consumers.
