How China made electric vehicles a basic flow

“I drive an electric vehicle because I’m poor,” says Lou Yunfen, a private rental driver who is in a charging station on the outskirts of Guangzhou in southern China.

Standing nearby, Sun Jingguo agrees. “The price of driving a gasoline car is too expensive. I save money by driving an electric vehicle,” he says.

“Also, it protects the environment,” he adds, leaning against her white Beijing U7.

This is the kind of conversations that climate campaigns dream of hearing. In many countries, electric vehicles (EV) are considered luxury purchases.

But here in China – where almost half of all the cars sold last year were electric – this is a banal reality.

At the beginning of the century, China’s leadership exhibited plans to dominate the technology of the future. After the bicycle nation of China is now the world leader in EVS.

For more than 18 million Guangzhou people, the roar of the PIC’s time has become a noise.

“As for EVS, China is 10 years ahead and 10 times better than any other country,” says automotive analyst Michael Dunn.

The Chinese Byd is now leading the EV global market after ahead of US rival Tesla earlier this year.

BYD sales have been aided by a huge internal market by over 1.4 billion people and is now striving to sell more cars abroad. They are also a raft of other Chinese start -ups that make EVS available for the mass market.

So how did China build this lead and can it be caught?

Tracking the origin of EV dominance in China, analysts often lend a WAN band trained with a German engineer who became Minister of Trade and Science in China in 2007.

“He looked around and said,” Good news: We are now the biggest car market in the world. Bad news: on the streets of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, everything I see are foreign brands, “says G -N Dun.

At that time, Chinese brands simply couldn’t compete with European, American and Japanese quality and prestige car manufacturers. These companies had an undeniable start when it came to the production of gasoline or diesel cars.

But China had enough resources, qualified workforce and ecosystem by suppliers in the automotive industry. Thus, G -n Wang decided to “change the game and turn the script by moving to electricity,” according to G -Dun.

That was the main plan.

Although the Chinese government included EVS in its five -year economic plan back in 2001, it was not until 2010 that it began to provide huge subsidies for the expansion of the industry.

China, unlike Western Democracies have the ability to mobilize huge parts of its economy for many years to its goals.

Infrastructure projects for mammoth in the country and the dominance of production are a testament to this.

American cerebral trust, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), estimated that from 2009 to the end of 2023, Beijing spent about $ 231 billion (£ 172 billion) developing the EV industry.

From consumers and car manufacturers to electricity suppliers and battery providers, everyone in China is entitled to money and assistance when it comes to EV.

He encouraged BYD, for example, to move from turning batteries for smartphones to focusing on EV production.

Ningde Catl -based – which supplies companies such as Tesla, Volkswagen and Ford – was founded in 2011 and is now producing one -third of all batteries used for EVS worldwide.

This combination of long -term planning and state funding also allowed China to dominate critical supplies for battery production.

It has helped to build the world’s largest public loading network with stations concentrated in large cities, which put drivers just minutes away from the closest charger.

“If you want to produce a battery to put in an electric car today, all roads pass through China,” says G -N Dunn.

Some call it as “state capitalism.” Western countries call it unfair business practice.

Chinese EV leaders insist that all companies, domestic or foreign, have access to the same resources.

As a result, they claim that China now has a thriving start -up sector of EV, led by fierce competition and culture of innovation.

“The Chinese government is doing the same as you see in Europe and in the US – providing political support, consumer promotion and infrastructure,” Brian Gu, president of the EV Xpeng manufacturer, before the BBC.

“But I think China has done it consistently and in a way that truly encourages the most competitive landscape that has. There is no favor for anyone,” he adds.

Xpeng is one of the “Chinese champions”, as G -n Gu says, moving the industry forward. It is only a decade to make a profit, the launch is already in the top 10 EV manufacturers in the world.

The company has attracted some of the best young graduates in China at its Guangzhou headquarters, where carelessly dressed employees drink flat white and web streams sell live cars in the showroom.

A brightly colored slide, which takes staff from the top to the ground floor, will look more at home in the silicone valley than in the industrial core of China.

Despite the calm atmosphere, G -n Gu says that the pressure to offer consumers better cars at lower prices is “huge”.

The BBC was invited to the XPeng Mona Max test, which has just been sold in China for about $ 20,000.

For this price, you get the ability to manage, activate voice, beds, movie and music streaming. Young Chinese graduates tell us, they see all of this as standard first car purchase features.

“The new generation of EV manufacturers … Look at cars as a different animal,” says David Lee, co -founder and CEO of Hesai, which makes Lidar Sensing technology used in many self -driven cars.

Young Chinese users are certainly attracted by the highest scope technology, but a huge amount of government spending go to create EVS financially attractive, according to a CSIS survey.

Public members receive subsidies for trade in their non -electric car for EV, as well as for tax exemption and subsidized rates in public fees.

These bonuses made D -Lu go to an electric two years ago. He paid 200 yuan ($ 27.84; £ 20.72) to fill his car for 400 km (248 miles) driving. Now it costs him a quarter of that.

People in China also usually pay thousands for the vehicle registration plate – sometimes more than the price of the car itself – as part of the government’s efforts to limit congestion and pollution. D -Lou now gets his green for free.

“Rich gasoline cars because they have unlimited resources,” says G -L Lou. “EV just makes sense to me.”

Another proud EV owner in Shanghai, who wanted to use his English name Daisy, says that instead of charging her car to a train station, she replaces her car’s battery at one of the many automated exchange stations in the city provided by the manufacturer of EV NIO.

After less than three minutes, the machines replace its flat battery with fully charged. This is the most modern technology for less than the price of a fuel tank.

Government subsidies are at the heart of EB’s growth in China as unjust from countries that want to protect their automotive industries.

The US, Canada and the European Union have imposed significant taxes on the import of Chinese EV.

However, the United Kingdom says it does not plan to follow the example – which makes it an attractive market for companies such as Xpeng, which began delivering its G6 model to British users in March and by BYD, which launched its Dolphin Surf model this month in the United Kingdom and is available for only $ 26,100.

This should be music to the ears of Western governments, which enthusiastically support the transition to EVS, which is called the United Nations organization “basic” to prevent the climate disaster.

Several Western countries, including the United Kingdom, say they will ban the sale of gasoline and diesel cars by 2030. No country is better placed to help become a reality from China.

“The Chinese think of a future where almost every car for the world is produced. They look to say, ‘Can anyone make it better than us? “, Says G -n Dunn.

“The leaders in Detroit, Nagoya, Germany, the United Kingdom, all around the world, shake their heads. This is a new era and the Chinese feel very confident in their perspectives right now.”

Despite the environmental benefits, there is still a suspicion of what relies on Chinese technology can bring.

Former UK leader Mi6, Sir Richard Dearlove, recently called Chinese EVS “Computers of Wheels”, which can be “controlled by Beijing”.

His claim that Chinese EVS can one day immobilize the British cities was rejected by BYD Executive Vice President Lee in a recent BBC interview.

“Someone can claim something if you lose the game. But what?” she said.

“Byd pays for a very high data security standard. We use local carriers for all our data. In fact, we do it 10 times better than our competition.”

However, Sir Richard’s concerns are echoing previous debates over national security over Chinese technology.

This includes the manufacturer of Huawei Telecommunication Infrastructures, whose equipment is prohibited in several Western countries, as well as in the Tiktok social media application, which is prohibited on the United Kingdom government devices.

But for Sun Jingguo in Guangzhou, the message is simple.

“I think the world has to thank China for bringing this technology to the world,” he laughs. “I do it.”

Additional reporting from Theo Leget, an international business correspondent in London.