Historically, iconic cars have been powerful symbols of a country\u2019s industrial coming-of-age. Think of the Ford Model T, or the VW Beetle. Japan signalled its post-war economic comeback with a sports coupe \u2013 the Toyota 2000GT, immortalized in the 1967 James Bond movie You Only Live Twice.<\/p>\n
For China today, that may be the Kosmera Nebula 1, an ultra-luxury EV from Dreame (pronounced \u201cdream-e\u201d) Technology that recently stole the show in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show, the world\u2019s premier tech event.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t just the Nebula\u2019s astonishing performance that drew huge crowds \u2014 the quad-motor powertrain is said to generate a staggering 1,900 horsepower, delivering 0-60mph in 1.8 seconds \u2014 but the manufacturer itself: Dreame is a home appliance maker, best known for its robot vacuum cleaners.<\/p>\n
The Nebula may be styled like a Bugatti, with acceleration to match, but it has as much in common with Dreame\u2019s high-tech suction devices: Both are powered by high-speed digital motors, both deploy aerospace-grade composite materials, and both are the product of precision 3D printing technology. There are similarities, too, in their cooling systems and AI-driven navigation.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the Nebula writ large heralds China\u2019s dominance over the industries of the future, the product of an integrated manufacturing ecosystem that enables seamless crossover between industrial sectors. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dreame is funded by Xiaomi, a Shenzhen-based tech giant which itself made the leap from consumer electronics products, like smartphones, to EVs. Apple, by comparison, tried for a decade to build an EV before giving up.<\/p>\n
Upstream, China\u2019s high-tech manufacturers rely on the same specialist supply chains for parts that fit into different products; downstream, they utilize the same distribution networks to reach customers. The system produces unbeatable economies of scale \u2014 and drastically lowers costs.<\/p>\n
Dreame says it will start commercial assembly of the Nebula in 2027 in a factory in Berlin, although it hasn\u2019t announced a retail price. Entry-level EVs in China start at around $5,000; the Geely M9 SUV, also exhibited at the Las Vegas show, offers a family-sized three-row interior at just $28,000. At those prices, European automakers are hard-pressed to compete, even with tariffs on EVs set as high as 35%. The US shuts out Chinese EVs with 100% levies.<\/p>\n
A recent OECD report said Chinese subsidies to EV makers, including grants and cheap loans, are up to nine times higher<\/a> relative to revenues than those in rich countries. But that\u2019s only part of the story driving their success.<\/p>\n Behind China\u2019s competitive threat to Western economies is a centralized industrial policy, coordinated by an authoritarian government, that has upended traditional notions about how innovation works.<\/p>\n Forget about the \u201cdemocratic advantage.\u201d China has put paid to the idea \u2014 long cherished among Western political theorists \u2014 that only free minds in open societies can truly innovate, and that, sooner or later, authoritarian regimes like China\u2019s will stall out. \u201cWe got this wrong,\u201d says Jennifer Lind, a professor at Dartmouth College whose book Autocracy 2.0 makes a convincing argument that China has become a technological superpower by recalibrating its repressive political impulses.<\/p>\n Faced with what has long been seen as a binary choice \u2014 to be poor and authoritarian, or rich and lose power \u2014 Lind says that China\u2019s Communist Party leaders found a third way: \u201cTry to maintain as much political control as you possibly can, while allowing as much freedom as you can to permit innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n Lind calls this \u201csmart authoritarianism,\u201d and it\u2019s beating Western models. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank, says that China is winning in 57 of 64 key technology areas, reversing decades of US dominance.<\/p>\n By now, China has locked in its industrial advantages. Kyle Chan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who researches China\u2019s industrial progress, says that the country\u2019s overlapping industries \u2014 EVs, robotics, batteries, AI \u2014 create a mutually reinforcing feedback loop. \u201cAs China becomes stronger in some industries, this tightens its grip on others<\/a>,\u201d he writes in his newsletter, High Capacity.<\/p>\n Dreame embodies what Chan calls the \u201cSwiss Army knife\u201d nature of China\u2019s technology champions. Its corporate slogan is a fitting tribute to the system that nurtured its ambitions: \u201cAll Dreams in One Dreame.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Historically, iconic cars have been powerful symbols of a country\u2019s industrial coming-of-age. Think of the Ford Model T,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":{"0":"post-418311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}