The recent surge in fuel prices due to the war in Iran has spurred demand for electric vehicles around the world, and Chinese car makers are making the most of the opportunity.<\/p>\n
China is the world’s top producer of EVs, and while its manufacturers remain largely shut out of the major car market of the United States, they are benefiting from an uptick in interest and orders via dealerships across Asia and elsewhere.<\/p>\n
BYD, which overtook Tesla as the world’s largest seller of electric vehicles last year and is expanding aggressively overseas, is at the centre of this shift in focus.<\/p>\n
“We survive and are successful without the US market today,” BYD executive vice president Stella Li told the BBC at the Beijing Auto Show. <\/p>\n
Instead of aiming for US customers, the company says its challenge is meeting increased demand in other regions, including Brazil, the UK and Europe.<\/p>\n
“Consumers feel the daily savings when oil prices increase. EVs help them save money every day,” Li said.<\/p>\n
“Actually, we are now suffering [insufficient] capacity. Our demand is much higher than what we can supply.”<\/p>\n
BYD is betting on its new “flash charging” technology which Li describes as a “game-changer” to help overcome one of the biggest barriers to EV adoption – concern over charging speeds.<\/p>\n
Flash charging can add hundreds of kilometres of range in minutes \u2013 a development Li said could persuade previously reluctant customers to consider an EV and allow BYD to compete more widely.<\/p>\n
At this year’s Beijing Auto Show, now the largest industry event in the world, more than 1,400 vehicles from hundreds of Chinese and foreign companies were on display with Chinese carmakers centre stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The recent surge in fuel prices due to the war in Iran has spurred demand for electric vehicles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-549166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}