The world's largest auto show, in Beijing, served to demonstrate that China is positioning itself as the world's largest manufacturer of electric cars.
A stylish SUV offers mechanical foot massages, a luxury minivan has swivel seats to help passengers get into the third row, and a surprising proportion of models offer in-car karaoke with professional-grade speakers. Others have headlights that can project movies onto a wall to transform any space into a drive-in cinema . Here, intelligent driving features are ubiquitous, even in affordable models.
For many consumers observing from the outside, the options in China , which were on display last week in Beijing at the world's largest auto show, seem like a dream. But for some automakers and politicians around the world, they represent an existential threat.
Chinese automakers are producing their offerings on a large scale and at a comparatively low price. And there's another big advantage: while oil and gas costs are soaring due to the war with Iran, the vast majority of these cars are electric or hybrid.
The contrast with the US has never been so stark: Washington, last year, reduced support for electric vehicles in favor of gasoline-guzzling vehicles and effectively prevented Chinese cars from entering the market, citing the need to protect national security and local industry.
With US President Donald Trump scheduled to visit China in mid-May for talks with leader Xi Jinping, the country's electric vehicle manufacturers are also eyeing another frontier, watching to see if growing global demand for electric vehicles will help them open the doors to the US market.
In any case, the intended message of this exhibition, covering an area equivalent to 70 football fields, was clear: China is relentlessly advancing the technology it believes will conquer the 21st century.
And China's major automakers are betting heavily that the rest of the world will choose their vision of an electric future, rather than one still tied to the gas pump.
The rise in gasoline prices is “a wake-up call for people who have never tried an electric vehicle,” BYD executive Stella Li told CNN on the sidelines of the trade show, where she discussed the ambitious expansion strategy of the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer. “Once you switch to an electric car, you never go back to switching to a gasoline vehicle.”
Expansion abroad
Winning over overseas customers is now imperative for key players in China.
By a wide margin, the country has the largest electric vehicle market in the world. More than half of the new cars sold in China are electric or hybrid. In its megacities and beyond, traffic is becoming increasingly quieter, with the low hum of the electric motor replacing the purr of an internal combustion engine.
But the industry titans are also engaged in a fierce and exhausting battle for market share , with brutal price wars and competition in a saturated domestic market reducing profits and hindering growth.
The overseas expansion is already accelerating, as major brands strive to build charging infrastructure and attract customers and partners abroad. China's electric vehicle exports in the first quarter increased 78% year-on-year, according to official data.
But Chinese automakers are also navigating a global landscape that views competition with suspicion.
An open letter from more than 70 American lawmakers to Trump last week warned the president against “any effort to reduce barriers to Chinese automobiles or otherwise facilitate their entry into the U.S. market,” stating that the consequences for American workers, supply chains, and national security “would be profound.”
The heavy tariffs on imported automobiles from China constitute a de facto embargo, and the ban on software linked to China in new automobiles complicates any plan to produce automobiles in the U.S. or neighboring countries.
Europe has opted for tariffs that it considers to level the playing field, not to block competition. And Chinese car factories are rapidly gaining market share in the region. Registrations of new BYD cars increased by almost 170% in the first quarter of this year in European Union countries, according to industry data .
What strikes fear into the hearts of foreign rivals is the enormous scale of production in China, where factories can rely on well-developed domestic supply chains and have automated their operations.
Behind this concern lies the fact that the government's long-standing support for the sector, through subsidies, tax breaks and other advantages, has turned Chinese cars into unfair competitors that will eliminate global competition.
But Chinese companies have a different vision.
Stella Li of BYD described to CNN her view that the strength of the United States lies in its ability to attract the smartest companies and the most talented people from around the world to compete. "As soon as it becomes a protected market, it will lose that advantage... it will make the country weaker," she stated.
But BYD and other Chinese automakers, including its main domestic rival, the automotive giant Geely, are not placing much hope on the US.
“We are open to dialogue, but we have no plans to enter the US market to sell our cars to end customers in the short or medium term,” Geely Senior Vice President Victor Yang told CNN at the auto show.
Outside the US? Victor Yang, whose company has joint ventures in several countries, including Brazil, South Korea, and the United Kingdom, sees this initiative as a win-win situation. “China’s best practices in electrification and digitalization can be shared with partners in other parts of the world, so that customers can ultimately benefit from the growth of technology as a whole,” he stated.
Fighting for the future
The transfer of technology from Chinese automotive companies to their foreign counterparts represents a sharp reversal from the situation just a few decades ago, when Chinese automakers relied on joint ventures with foreign brands in their market to gain know-how .
Now, just as Ford and the assembly line came to symbolize American ingenuity in the 20th century, China's electric vehicle sector and its highly automated production have become emblematic of China's rise as a technological power in the 21st century.
The global success of Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers could offer Beijing a new soft power lever , at a time when the country is trying to position itself as an alternative global leader to the US.
And the global oil shock, which has already lasted for more than two months, also underscores what Beijing sees as a merit in the path it has chosen.
China's electric vehicles fit into the government's broader, long-standing effort to reduce dependence on oil and gas and electrify its economy , including with renewable energy. It's a strategy that appears to have served the world's second-largest economy well in the current crisis.
China's fleet of electric and hybrid vehicles has reduced domestic oil demand by more than 1 million barrels per day, according to a 2025 study by the Rhodium Group.
But a stroll through the aisles of the Beijing Auto Show made it clear that Chinese brands don't see their race as simply about fuel efficiency. Instead, it's about technology.
And just as American companies like Tesla and Waymo are building a future where fleets of autonomous cars transport people on their daily commutes and in their lives, their Chinese rivals – automakers like XPeng, Geely, and BYD, and technology companies like Baidu, Huawei, and Pony.ai – are building their own technological ecosystems to do the same.
And there too, Chinese companies are confident that they can compete.
credit: cnn portugal
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