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Transportation China Power

China's EV Sales Set To Overtake Traditional Cars Years Ahead of West (irishtimes.com) 134

Posted by EditorDavid from the buying-batteries dept.
"Electric vehicles are expected to outsell cars with internal combustion engines in China for the first time next year," reports the Financial Times, calling it "a historic inflection point that puts the world's biggest car market years ahead of western rivals." China is set to smash international forecasts and Beijing's official targets with domestic EV sales — including pure battery and plug-in hybrids — growing about 20 per cent year on year to more than 12mn cars in 2025, according to the latest estimates supplied to the Financial Times by four investment banks and research groups. The figure would be more than double the 5.9mn sold in 2022. At the same time, sales of traditionally powered cars are expected to fall by more than 10 per cent next year to less than 11 million, reflecting a near 30 per cent plunge from 14.8 million in 2022...

Robert Liew, director of Asia-Pacific renewables research at Wood Mackenzie, said China's EV milestone signalled its success in domestic technology development and securing global supply chains for critical resources needed for EVs and their batteries. The industry's scale meant steep manufacturing cost reductions and lower prices for consumers. "They want to electrify everything," said Liew. "No other country comes close to China." While the pace of Chinese EV sales growth has eased from a post-pandemic frenzy, the forecasts suggest Beijing's official target, set in 2020, for EVs to account for 50 per cent of car sales by 2035, will be achieved 10 years in advance of schedule...

As China's EV market tracked towards year-on-year growth of near 40 per cent in 2024, the market share of foreign-branded cars fell to a record low of 37 per cent — a sharp decline from 64 per cent in 2020, according to data from Automobility, a Shanghai-based consultancy. In this month alone, GM wrote down more than $5 billion (€4.8 billion) of its business value in China; the holding company behind Porsche warned of a writedown in its Volkswagen stake of up to €20 billion; and arch rivals Nissan and Honda said they were responding to a "drastically changing business environment" with a merger.
"Meanwhile, EV sales growth has slowed in Europe and the US, reflecting the legacy car industry's slow embrace of new technology, uncertainty over government subsidies and rising protectionism against imports from China..."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

China's EV Sales Set To Overtake Traditional Cars Years Ahead of West More | Reply

China's EV Sales Set To Overtake Traditional Cars Years Ahead of West

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  • Communism bad, m'kay? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 04, 2025 @05:49PM (#65062311)
    American politicians previously: Communism bad, China. Be more capitalist.

    American politicians now: We can't compete in the marketplace! Sanctions! Tariffs! Bans!
    • using slave labor to build EVs. So yeah, sanctions & tariffs are called for.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Most of the west's sanctions are due to the Chinese gov't subsidizing EV & battery companies using tax breaks, discount real-estate, gov't fleet subsidies, etc.

      • using slave labor to build EVs.

        Nonsense.

        The EVs are built in Shanghai and Guangdong (Shenzen and Huizhou).

        The slave labor camps are in Xinjiang, 4000 km away.

      • If you call robots slave labor.

    • You don't seem to understand how China works.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Kartu ( 1490911 )

      EVs sell "well" in China, as one needs 1+ year in most populated places in China to get permission to drive an ICE car.

      Of all EV manufacturers, even though heavily subsidized, only one, BYD was profitable.

      So "free marketplace", my bottom.

  • Different imperatives in China (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SlashTex ( 10502574 ) on Saturday January 04, 2025 @06:11PM (#65062353)
    The government is actively promoting EV sales, partially due to economics, partially due to national security.

    1 - of course, china has almost a stranglehold on current production of many of the materials (lithium, rare earths...) used in EVs and solar production.

    2- China is rightfully concerned with its vulnerability to petroleum blockades in the event of conflict. BUT, they have a metric-shit-load of coal.

    So, incenting the manufacture and purchase of EVs, which can use both of these power sources, is a no-brainer for them.
    • It's not a bad idea. Even though they'll gladly buy oil from whatever pariah state the rest of the world has embargoed, in the event of any actual conflict, it's far too easy to cut off their ability to import it and recent events have shown that pipelines are not off limits.

      China also has a relatively low rate of vehicle ownership (about 300 per 1,000 people) and although that's been increasing rapidly over that past several decades, it doesn't make as much sense for them to invest in older technology i

    • Re:Different imperatives in China (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday January 05, 2025 @12:02AM (#65062937) Homepage Journal

      Chinese car manufacturers realised that competing with fossil engines was not a winning strategy. At best they would become participants in global car sales.

      So they leapfrogged us. Went all in on EV technology.. Built the best batteries, the best drivetrains, got the cost down below parity, and put it all into mass production. And I do mean mass, on a scale that dwarfs the rest of the world combined.

      Same thing with renewables. Unbelievable amounts of it, and continuing to increase exponentially.

      We were asleep at the wheel.

      • Re:Different imperatives in China (Score:4, Insightful)

        by RossCWilliams ( 5513152 ) on Sunday January 05, 2025 @02:06AM (#65063105)

        We were asleep at the wheel.

        And still are.

        The difference is accountability of leaders.China has a ruling elite formed out of and accountable to a large communist party apparatus. Our ruling elite is a bunch of folks from Harvard and Yale who pat one another on the back about how smart they are. Their leaders are focused on managing their country's economic progress. Ours are focused on managing perceptions. Their leaders are looking to the future. Ours are looking at the past. Their leaders are trying to lead their people in the direction they think is best. Ours are looking back to see where the parade they want to lead is headed so they can get in front of it.

        Until we overthrow the folks from Harvard and Yale, we will continue to struggle. We are falling further and further behind our rivals and losing the confidence and support of our allies in the world. And we are losing any social cohesion at home as they seek to maintain their power by manufacturing and encouraging division rather than cooperation by all Americans in building a shared future.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          We have a similar problem with Eton in the UK. I don't know how we fix it. We were offered a better alternative, and rejected it.

      • Like Japan in the late 70s making reliable fuel efficient cars that could corner and put de-tuned v8 land yachts to shame.

  • China needs EVs (regardless of climate change) (Score:5, Informative)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday January 04, 2025 @06:14PM (#65062355)

    They don't have (much) oil, and that's a major weak spot. Therefore electric cars, which can be powered using their domestic energy sources like coal, hydro, nuclear, and solar are needed.

    • Not having enough oil is a positive for them (and us from a pollution standpoint), its driven EV tech and created a massive local industry with great employment for them.
  • Let's tell it like it is, kids: There's a metric assload of absolute bullshit that comes out of China, both information and material goods. They lie through their teeth about anything and everything, and there's much half-assed shit they produce and ship over here to sell to us dumb round-eyed barbarians. So really, honestly, truly: what's the chance that an EV made by a Chinese company isn't going to be a total piece of shit that maybe burns itself to the ground for no apparent reason other than it's poor

  • Domestic companies, as is typical, would rather fight change in the name of short term profits than embrace it for long term profit and good.

    So... since they're going to fail anyway and take a lot of taxpayer dollars with them... we should have let China sell EVs here. Open the fucking floodgates, so long as they meet our safety standards and don't have any extra features requiring or enabling C&C from Beijing.

    We could all be driving EVs for half the price and letting China deal with the environmental

    • Does China make a full size EV pickup? That is half the market here.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Hentes ( 2461350 )

      I would go even further than that. Most safety standards have been put there by automaker lobbyists and do little more than prevent competition. We need a cheap electric people's car and we need it yesterday. Either Western companies provide one, or we should remove all barriers and let Chinese manufacturers do it.

  • Until last year, 50% of VW's global profits came from its China operations. For decades its ICE vehicles were the market leader in China, and its factories were major profit centres. In those circumstances it's perhaps not unexpected that VW missed the move to EVs because no executive wanted to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. VW head office is now in a world of hurt because its Chinese ICE production lines are at a standstill and its European designed EV offerings are two generations behind the Ch

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      VW is going to license BYD's framework, bolt on some different shaped panels and rebadge it with a VW logo

      Hopefully that's the future: modular. It would make vehicles a lot less expensive and add flexibility. VW actually might have it right after-all.

  • Think of where we would be as a nation at this point in time had not Musk done a swan dive into the shallow pool. He committed the last of his funds into Tesla (and SpaceX) in order to save it because no other funding was forthcoming. At the time he figured a 50% chance of survival.

    Had he not, the story in 2025 not be "China doing more EVs than ICE vehicles." It would be "China dominates the world with its EV production that nobody can match." Oh, and here's a limited quantity of Nissan Leaf cars for

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by hdyoung ( 5182939 )
      Two responses: First, yes Musk took genuine serious risks with his own money. He’s earned his places as a titan of industry in a way that most current CEOs don’t deserve. Second, if Musk hadn’t blown open the EV market, China would be nowhere near where they are nowadays. Even now, most Chinese innovation isn’t really. They’re really good at taking ideas from someone else (I have no problem with that), they make a few small modifications (again, I have no problem with iterative

      • Re:A message for Musk haters (Score:5, Interesting)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday January 05, 2025 @12:26AM (#65062985) Homepage Journal

        Tesla is actually proof that we screwed up. Compare a Model 3 with Panasonic-Tesla battery, and one with a Chinese battery, otherwise identical. The Chinese one chargers faster, accelerates faster, degrades less.

        Chinese companies started doing the fundamental R&D to improve that tech long ago. While Musk was selling expensive luxury vehicles with fake promises of self driving, the Chinese were deploying massive amounts of automotive batteries are scale in commercial vehicles. Buses, taxis, trains, construction equipment. That worked all the issues that Musk dumped on consumers out, and drove prices down.

        A few western companies have tried making knock offs of Chinese batteries, but it's not as simple as implementing someone else's idea. There is a lot of R&D that needs to be done, and while they are doing it the Chinese are racing ahead. We need to do what they did and leapfrog, but it's not clear what tech we can do that with.

    • "China dominates the world with its EV production that nobody can match."

      That pretty much describes the situation as it is. I am not sure how much difference Tesla makes to that reality now or will make in the future. Musk certainly caught the wave, but its not clear how long he can ride it. At some point Tesla will have to produce better and/or cheaper cars than its competitors. The novelty of EV is wearing off and with it the value of the Tesla brand which is tightly tied to that novelty.

    • > Think of where we would be as a nation at this point in time had not Musk done a swan dive into the shallow pool

      Musk did nothing for the EV market other than to show its possible to inflate a car makers stock price to ridiculous levels.

      Over here in the UK a Tesla was unheard of. The rest of the world saw:

      The Toyota Prius
      The Nissan Leaf.

  • I'm much more curious about how Chinese EV owners charge their cars, especially those owners without home charging options. Has China figured out a way to make public charging work? Do the Chinese simply accept waiting 30 minutes for a partial fast charge? Or do they have a system that is more convenient? If they do, perhaps other countries can learn something.

  • I really don't get why a country (China) is compared to 'the West'.

  • Keep in mind that 90% (probably more) of figures that come out of China are bullshit. Fields upon fields of these cars sit to rot all in a bid to trick investors into thinking sales are booming. It's just another Chinese smokescreen.

  • I have heard first hand, that full charge of Chinese EV costs about 50 cents. USA & EU can't nowhere near financially compete with such ludicrously low cost of Chinese electricity, while their own price costs of fully charged EVs are swiftly approaching price levels of a full tank of gasoline or diesel fuels.

    • > while their own price costs of fully charged EVs are swiftly approaching price levels of a full tank of gasoline or diesel fuels

      Plus the cost of getting the vehicle in the first place.

  • Easy peasy when you (china) hold all the keys and control the manufacturing, when you have all the rare earth materieals and mines and processing facilities.

    The West cant compete as China can price them out as well as ration what can be exported.

    Not that I really care, I live in the UK and our 1% of global contributions are decreasing simply because we cant afford to use energy much anymore.

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