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The roots of China's EV surge go back nearly two decades.
Legacy automakers in the US, Japan and Europe had "such a big head start" on gas-powered vehicles that it was unlikely China would ever catch up, Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said. EVs offered the chance to dominate a new market.
It was "a pretty big bet," said Ilaria Mazzocco, an expert in Chinese climate policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And the road wasn't smooth. A few years in, "it was considered kind of a failure."
The government started introducing EV-friendly policies in earnest around 2009, Mazzocco told CNN, offering manufacturers cheap credit and funding for research.
But ultimately the bet paid off, thanks to a combination of consistent support from China's city and central governments, advances in battery technology and a slew of highly competitive companies, she said, including Tesla's main rival, China-based BYD.
The country now boasts a robust charging infrastructure and homegrown EV expertise, technologies and materials. It's producing large amounts of cheap EVs that people actually want to buy, Lauri Myllyvirta, co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said. It's a very different picture in the US, where the economic case for EVs without subsidies is weaker, he added, because gas is "extraordinarily cheap" and Americans prefer "absolutely massive vehicles."
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📸 : Illustration by Leah Abucayan/CNN/Getty
