The Lesson From BYD's EV Takeover: Don't Discount China

Worland shares his views on the lesson given by Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs) of Chinese automaker BYD that surpassed Tesla as the world's biggest producer of EVs. And a handful of other Chinese EV makers are planning to rapidly expand in the European market with much cheaper offerings than their European and American competitors.The significance of the rise in the Chinese auto industry as part and parcel of the energy transition is hard to understate. This is not just a macroeconomic and geopolitical question. At a company by company level, automakers see the threat. Chinese electric vehicles are on the rise in part because of strategic decisions made more than a decade ago, both within companies and at the national level, to develop the capacity to manufacture clean technology. Estimates vary, but various analyses agree that the total value of the Chinese government's EV subsidies between 2009 and 2022 measured in the tens of billions of dollars, if not more. That investment has put Chinese clean technology companies in a place to internationalize. Indeed, today Chinese companies have also taken a lead in the manufacturing of a range of clean energy technologies, from solar panels to lithium-ion batteries, leaving American companies behind.