Western automotive and green energy executives who visit China are returning humbled \u2014 and even terrified.<\/p>\n
As The Telegraph reports<\/a>, the executives are warning that the country\u2019s heavily automated manufacturing industry could quickly leave Western nations behind, especially when it comes to electric vehicles.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are in a global competition with China, and it\u2019s not just EVs,\u201d Ford CEO Jim Farley told <\/a>The Verge<\/a> last month<\/a>. \u201cAnd if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.\u201d<\/p>\n Some companies are giving up on new initiatives altogether, with the founder of mining company Fortescue, Andrew Forrest, claiming that his recent trip to China led to him abandoning attempts to produce EV powertrains in-house.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are no people \u2014 everything is robotic,\u201d he told The Telegraph.<\/p>\n Other executives recalled touring \u201cdark factories\u201d that don\u2019t even need to keep the lights on, as most work is being done around the clock by robots.<\/p>\n \u201cYou get this sense of a change, where China\u2019s competitiveness has gone from being about government subsidies and low wages to a tremendous number of highly skilled, educated engineers who are innovating like mad,\u201d British energy supplier Octopus CEO Greg Jackson told the newspaper.<\/p>\n According to recent figures<\/a> by the International Federation of Robotics, China has deployed orders of magnitude more industrial robots than Germany, the US, and the UK.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not just a desire to keep margins low through the automation of human labor.<\/p>\n \u201cChina has quite a notable demographic problem but its manufacturing is, generally, quite labor-intensive,\u201d Bismarck Analysis analyst Rian Whitton told The Telegraph. \u201cSo in a pre-emptive fashion, they want to automate it as much as possible, not because they expect they\u2019ll be able to get higher margins \u2014 that is usually the idea in the West \u2014 but to compensate for this population decline and to get a competitive advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond EVs, China has also made a major push toward adopting artificial intelligence<\/a> as part of a ten-year plan<\/a>, with the aim of making it a \u201ckey growth engine for the country\u2019s economic development.\u201d<\/p>\n The country\u2019s space program has also made massive strides<\/a>, stoking fears of China beating the US back to the Moon<\/a>.<\/p>\n The early warning signs of a Chinese industry-dominated future are already apparent, particularly when it comes to electric vehicles. While the United States has put protectionist measures in place to shield domestic producers and fend off steep competition, Chinese-made EVs have made a big impression in Europe. <\/p>\n \u201cRobotics, if deployed well, can lift the productivity of your economy greatly,\u201d Center for European Reform chief economist Sander Tordoir told The Telegraph. \u201cAnd if China is extremely good at it, then we should try to catch up because, like China, a lot of Europe is aging.\u201d<\/p>\n For now, the dam in the US is holding as bans on Chinese EVs remain in place<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cThe competitive reality is that the Chinese are the 700-pound gorilla in the EV industry,\u201d Farley told The Verge<\/a> last month.<\/p>\n The Ford CEO admitted he\u2019s already gotten a personal taste of what\u2019s out there.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t like talking about the competition so much, but I drive the Xiaomi,\u201d Farley\u00a0added. \u201cWe flew one from Shanghai to Chicago, and I\u2019ve been driving it for six months now, and I don\u2019t want to give it up.\u201d<\/p>\n