These days, you can’t talk about the electric vehicle race without talking about China.
In just the last five years or so, the world’s biggest automotive market has gone from being a buyer and local maker of Western cars to being a producer of class-leading electric cars. With brands like BYD, Xpeng, Nio and the rest, China is producing EVs with exceptional range, performance and software integration, often at much lower prices than their foreign competitors.
There are a lot of reasons why that happened. Many critics—and justifiably so, I would add—point to China’s labor practices and what’s often described as unfair export policies. But that’s only part of the story. Thanks to a combination of government subsidies, intense internal competition, a laser focus on innovation and simply knowing their buyers better than anyone else, China’s auto sector has gotten legitimately good. And now the rest of the world has to take it seriously.
We’re taking a holiday travel-related break from the news (which is why I recorded this in a rented Tesla Model 3) to talk about China: where it’s at in the automotive race in late 2024, where it’s headed next and why it’s far from invincible. And my co-host Tim Levin and I are joined by a special guest: InsideEVs Staff Writer Kevin Williams, who’s had more firsthand experience with China’s EVs than almost any other American journalist. Kevin also just got back from China where he drove several Nio and Onvo cars, so he’s here to chat about battery-swapping EVs and much, much more.
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