{"id":409436,"date":"2026-05-03T06:34:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T06:34:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/409436\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T06:34:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T06:34:27","slug":"what-oil-crisis-chinas-evs-are-ready-to-dominate-the-21st-century-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/409436\/","title":{"rendered":"What oil crisis? China\u2019s EVs are ready to dominate the 21st century"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beijing\u00a0\u2014\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

\n A sleek SUV offers mechanical foot massages, a luxury minivan has rotating seats to help passengers hop into its third row \u2013 and a surprising proportion of models offer in-car karaoke with professional-grade speakers. Others have headlights that can project movies onto a wall to make anywhere a drive-in cinema. Here, intelligent driving features are ubiquitous, even in affordable models.\n <\/p>\n

\n To many consumers peering in from the outside, the options in China<\/a> \u2013 on display in Beijing this week at the world\u2019s largest auto show \u2013 seem like a dream. But to some automakers and politicians around the world, they\u2019re an existential threat.\n <\/p>\n

\n Chinese carmakers are cranking out their offerings at a large scale and a comparatively low price. And there\u2019s another major sell: while oil and gas costs skyrocke<\/a>t due to the Iran war, the vast majority of these cars are electric or hybrid.\n <\/p>\n

\n The contrast with the US has never been as stark: Washington last year rolled back support for EVs in favor of gas guzzlers, and it has effectively barred Chinese cars<\/a> from entering the market, citing a need to protect national security<\/a> and local industry.\n <\/p>\n

\n With US President Donald Trump expected in China in mid-May for talks with leader Xi Jinping, the country\u2019s EV makers are also eyeing another frontier, watching whether growing global demand for EVs will help them pry open the door to the US market.\n <\/p>\n

\n Regardless, the intended message from the 70-football-field-sized showcase is clear: China is relentlessly moving forward with the technology it believes will win the 21st century.\n <\/p>\n

\n And China\u2019s top carmakers \u2013 and Beijing \u2013 are betting big that the rest of the world will choose their vision of an electric future,<\/a> rather than one still tied to the gas pump.\n <\/p>\n

\n Rising gas prices are \u201ca wake-up call for the people who never touch EV,\u201d BYD<\/a> executive Stella Li told CNN on the show\u2019s sidelines, where she discussed the world\u2019s largest EV maker\u2019s ambitious expansion strategy. <\/a>\u201cWhen you jump to the electric car, you never walk back to switch to the gas vehicle.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

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Why the world\u2019s largest EV maker thinks it can stay on top\n <\/p>\n

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Why the world\u2019s largest EV maker thinks it can stay on top<\/p>\n

2:31<\/p>\n

\n Winning customers overseas is now imperative for China\u2019s major players.\n <\/p>\n

\n By a wide margin, the country has the world\u2019s largest EV market. More than half of new cars sold in China are electric or hybrid. In its megacities and beyond, traffic is increasingly falling silent, the dull whir of the electric motor replacing the purr of an internal combustion engine.\n <\/p>\n

\n But its industry titans are also locked in a knock-down, drag-out fight for market share<\/a>, with brutal price wars and competition in a crowded home market deflating profits and stymieing growth.\n <\/p>\n

\n Outward expansion is already ramping up as major brands push to build out charging infrastructure and woo customers and partners abroad. China\u2019s EV exports in the first quarter surged 78% year on year, according to official data.\n <\/p>\n

\n But China\u2019s automakers are also navigating a global landscape that\u2019s wary of the competition.\n <\/p>\n

\n An open letter from more than 70 American lawmakers to Trump last week warned the president against \u201cany effort to lower barriers for Chinese automobiles or otherwise facilitate their entry into the US market,\u201d saying the consequences for American workers, supply chains and national security \u201cwould be profound.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Hefty tariffs on cars imported from China to the US make for a de facto embargo, and a ban on Chinese-connected software in new cars complicates any plan to produce cars in the US or neighboring countries for the market.\n <\/p>\n

\n Europe has opted for tariffs it sees as leveling the playing field, not blocking the competition. And Chinese carmakers are fast gaining market share there. New-car registrations for BYDs were up nearly 170% in the first quarter of this year in European Union countries, industry data<\/a> shows.\n <\/p>\n

\n What strikes fear into the hearts of overseas rivals is the sheer scale of production in China, where automakers can rely on deep domestic supply chains and have automated their factories.\n <\/p>\n

\n Underlying that concern is that the government\u2019s long-standing backing for the sector, in subsidies, tax breaks and other perks, has made Chinese cars unfair competitors that will wipe out global competition.\n <\/p>\n

\n But Chinese firms take a different view.\n <\/p>\n

\n BYD\u2019s Li described to CNN her view that America\u2019s strength comes down to its ability to attract the most intelligent companies and most talented people from around the world to compete. \u201cOnce you become a protected market, then you will lose this advantage \u2026 you will make the country weaker,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\n But BYD and other Chinese automakers including its major domestic rival, auto giant Geely, are not holding their breath on the US.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe are open for discussion, but we do not have a plan to go to the US market to sell our cars to end customers in the short or medium run,\u201d Geely\u2019s senior vice president Victor Yang told CNN at the auto show.\n <\/p>\n

\n Outside the US? Yang, whose company has joint ventures in a handful of countries including Brazil, South Korea and the United Kingdom, sees this push as a win-win. \u201cThe best from China\u2019s electrification, smartification practices can be shared with partners in other parts of the world, so that customers can finally benefit from the growth of the technology as a whole,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

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Will China\u2019s self-driving cars dominate the roads?\n <\/p>\n

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Will China\u2019s self-driving cars dominate the roads?<\/p>\n

1:49<\/p>\n

\n Tech transfer from Chinese auto firms to foreign peers is an abrupt reversal from a situation just decades ago when it was Chinese automakers relying on joint ventures<\/a> with foreign brands in their market for know-how.\n <\/p>\n

\n Now, much in the way that Ford and the assembly line came to symbolize American ingenuity of the 20th century, China\u2019s EV sector and its heavily automated production have become emblematic of China\u2019s rise as a tech powerhouse in the 21st.\n <\/p>\n

\n Global success for China\u2019s EV makers could offer Beijing a new lever of soft power \u2013 at a time when the country is trying to position itself as an alternative global leader to the US.\n <\/p>\n

\n And the over-two-month-long global oil shock also underscores what Beijing sees as a merit in its chosen path.\n <\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n

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\n China\u2019s EVs fit into the government\u2019s broader, yearslong push to reduce reliance on oil and gas and electrify its economy<\/a>, including with renewable energy. It\u2019s a strategy that appears to have served the world\u2019s second-largest economy well in the current crunch.\n <\/p>\n

\n China\u2019s fleet of electric and hybrid vehicles has reduced national oil demand by more than 1 million barrels per day, according to a 2025 study by the Rhodium Group.\n <\/p>\n

\n But a lap through the halls of the Beijing auto show makes it clear that Chinese brands don\u2019t see their race as one that\u2019s simply about fuel efficiency. Instead, it\u2019s one about tech.\n <\/p>\n

\n And just as US firms like Tesla and Waymo are building out a future where fleets of autonomous cars shuffle people through their daily commutes and lives, their Chinese rivals \u2013 carmakers like XPeng, Geely, BYD, and tech firms like Baidu, Huawei and Pony.Ai \u2013 are building out their own tech ecosystems to do the same.\n <\/p>\n

\n And there, too, Chinese firms are confident in they can compete.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beijing\u00a0\u2014\u00a0 A sleek SUV offers mechanical foot massages, a luxury minivan has rotating seats to help passengers hop…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-409436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}