The story of the global EV boom is really a story of China’s EV boom. The country’s consumers, attracted by government subsidies, are flocking to electric cars made by Tesla and its Chinese competitors. BYD, the EV giant backed by Warren Buffett, is close to overtaking Tesla as the world’s largest seller of battery-powered electric vehicles, almost entirely from local sales. And the flood of cheap EVs has helped China overtake Japan as the world’s largest car exporter.
Even Elon Musk accepts that China is set to dominate the EV market. “There’s a lot of people out there who think that the top 10 car companies are going to be Tesla followed by nine Chinese car companies. I think they might not be wrong,” the Tesla CEO recently said at a New York Times conference. “The Chinese car companies are extremely competitive.”
