How China made electric vehicles mainstream

“I drive an electric vehicle because I am poor,” says Lu Yunfeng, a private fare driver, which is at a charging station on the outskirts of Guangzhou in the south of China.

Standing nearby, Sun Jingguo agrees. “The cost of driving a petrol car is very expensive. I save money to drive an electric vehicle,” they say.

“In addition, it protects the environment,” he says, bend against his white Beijing U7 model.

This kind of conversation is the dream of listening to climate preachers. In many countries, electric vehicles (EVS) are considered luxury purchases.

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

At the beginning of the century, China’s leadership planned to dominate future technologies. Once a nation of bicycle China is now the leader of the world in EVS.

For more than 18 million people of Guangzhou, the roar of Rush Hour has become a lukewarm.

Auto sector analyst Michael Dune says, “When it comes to EVS, China is 10 years ahead and is 10 times better than any other country.”

After beating the US rival Tesla earlier this year, China’s byd now leads the global EV market.

The sale of Byd has been helped by a large domestic market of over 1.4 billion people and is now looking to sell more cars abroad. So there are also a fleet of other Chinese start-ups that make cheap EVs for the market on a large scale.

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

In finding out the origin of China’s EV dominance, analysts often credited the Van gang – a German -educated engineer who became the Minister of Trade and Science in 2007.

“He looked around and said,” Good news: We are now the largest car market in the world. Bad news: I am watching everyone on the streets of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhu, “Sri Dune says.

At that time, the Chinese brands could not compete with European, American and Japanese car manufacturers only for quality and reputation. When it came to producing petrol or diesel-operated cars, these companies had a unavailable head.

But China had adequate resources, an ecosystem of suppliers in a skilled labor force and motor industry. So Mr. Van decided to change the game and flip the script by going to Electrics. “

This was a master plan.

Even though the Chinese government included EVS in its five -year economic blueprint in early 2001, it did not until the 2010s that it started providing large amounts of subsidy to develop the industry.

Unlike China, Western Democracy has the ability to raise the vast health of its economy over its objectives, its objectives.

The country’s vast infrastructure projects and dominance in manufacturing are a will for this.

A US think tank, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimates that from 2009 to the end of 2023, Beijing spent around 231BN (£ 172BN) to develop the EV industry.

From consumers and car manufacturers to power providers and battery suppliers, everyone in China deserves money and assistance while talking about EVS.

This encouraged Byd, for example, to switch to focus on the production of EVS from making smartphone batteries.

Ningde -based CATL – which supplies firms such as Tesla, Volkswagen and Ford – was established in 2011 and is now a third of all batteries used for EVS worldwide.

The long -term plan and this combination of government funds allowed China to dominate significant supply chains in battery production.

This has helped create the world’s largest public charging network with stations centered in large cities, which has placed drivers a few minutes away from the nearest charger.

“If you want to manufacture a battery to insert an electric car today, all roads pass through China,” Sri Dune says.

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

Chinese EV officials have access to all companies, domestic or foreign, equal resources.

As a result, they argue, China now has a rich EV start-up sector, inspired by the culture of fierce competition and innovation.

EV Maker XpenG president Brian Gu, Brian Gu, tells the BBC, “The Chinese government is doing what you are looking in in Europe and in America – providing policy assistance, consumer encouragement and infrastructure,” EV Maker Express President Brian Gu, tells BBC.

“But I think China has done it continuously and in a way that really promotes the most competitive landscape that is there. There is no bias for anyone,” he says.

Xpeng is one of the “Chinese Champion”, as Mr. Gu has said, carries the industry forward. Barely a decade is a decade old and yet to turn on a profit, start-up is already among the world’s top 10 EV producers.

The company has attracted some of China’s top young graduates to its headquarters in Guangzhou, where the staff dressed carelessly sells flat blonde and sell live cars in the internet streamers showrooms.

A bright colored slide carrying employees from top to ground at home in Silicon Valley compared to China’s industrial heart.

Despite a comfortable environment, Mr. Gu says that the pressure to offer better cars to consumers at low prices is “immense”.

The BBC was invited to a test drive in Mona Max in XPENG, which has gone on sale in China for about $ 20,000.

For this price, you get self-driving capacity, voice activation, lat-flat bed, film and music streaming. Young Chinese graduates, we have been told, see all these as standard features for the first car purchase.

“New generations of EV manufacturers … see cars as a separate animal,” Hesai’s co-founder and CEO David Lee says, which creates a lidar sensing technique used in many self-driving cars.

According to CSIS studies, young Chinese consumers are certainly attracted to top-ranging technology, but a large amount of government spending leads to make EVS financially attractive.

The members of the public get subsidy for EV to do business in their non-electric cars and also have tax exemption and subsidized rates at public charging stations.

These allowances fired Mr. Lu two years ago to go to Electric. He paid 200 yuan ($ 27.84; £ 20.72) to fill his car for 400 km (248 mi) driving. Now he costs a quarter.

People in China generally pay thousands of their vehicle registration plates – sometimes more than the cost of the car – as part of government efforts to limit crowds and pollution. Mr. Lu now becomes his green for free.

“Rich drive petrol cars because they have unlimited resources,” says Mr. Lu. “An eV is understandable to me just.”

Another proud EV owner in Shanghai, who wanted to use his English name Daisy, says that instead of charging his vehicle at a station, he changes his car battery in one of the many automated swapping stations in the city provided by EV maker NIOs.

In three minutes, the machines replace its flat battery with a fully charge. This is the condition of art technology for less than the price of a tank of fuel.

Government subsidies at the center of China’s EV growth are seen as unfair by countries looking to protect their car industries.

The US, Canada and the European Union have imposed adequate imports on all Chinese EVs.

However, the UK says it is not planning to follow the suit – it is creating an attractive market for firms like XPENG, which began to distribute their G6 models to British consumers in March, and byd, which launched its dolphin surf model in the UK this month, and is available as $ 26,100.

It should be music for the ears of Western governments that enthusiastically withdraw the infection for EVS, which the United Nations calls “decisive” to avoid climate disaster.

Many Western countries, including the UK, say they will ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2030. No country has been kept better to help make it reality compared to China.

“Chinese are thinking of a future where they manufacture every car for the world. They are saying,” Can anyone do it better than us? “

“Detroit, Nagoya, Germany, UK leaders, everywhere around the world, shaking their heads. It is a new era, and Chinese are still feeling very confident about their possibilities.”

Despite environmental benefits, there is still doubt what Chinese technology can trust.

Former British head MI6, Sir Richard Dearlov, recently called Chinese EVS “Computer on Wheels”, which can be “controlled by Beijing”.

He claims that Chinese EVS may one day stabilize British cities, recently rejected by BDD Executive Vice President Stella Lee in an BBC interview.

“Anyone can claim anything if they lose the game. But what’s that?” He said.

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

Nevertheless, Sir Richard’s concerns echo the previous national security debate around Chinese technology.

This includes telecom infrastructure maker Huawei, whose equipment was banned in many western countries, as well as social media app Tiktok, which is prohibited on UK government equipment.

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

“I think the world should thank China for bringing this technology into the world,” he laughs. “I do.”

Additional Reporting by Theo Legate, International Trade Correspondent in London.