China Is Overtaking America. In an Electric Car.

When the history of the early twenty-first century is written, it will surely focus on the war for global supremacy between two great nations: China and the United States.

It’s a war playing out in countless arenas, and all the signs point to America falling behind. China is hoarding rare earth minerals, building batteries, dominating drones (the ones deciding the fate of Ukraine), controlling critical supply chains, and stealing intellectual property. Oh, and they’re also coming for America’s electric cars.

Tesla, Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company, was once a potent symbol of America’s technological supremacy: a reminder that this country has the best ideas—and the will to make them happen. But, in a sign of the times, America’s EV pioneer now faces a growing threat from Chinese companies that have studied American inventions, replicated them, and arguably surpassed them, selling them—at scarily cheap prices—around the world.

Last year, China’s leading EV company BYD—it claims the initials stand for Build Your Dreams—sold 4.3 million vehicles, overtaking reigning EV champion Tesla as the world’s largest EV maker. In Germany, China has over 40 percent of the EV market. In Mexico, it’s 70 percent. In Brazil, it’s an astonishing 89 percent, the vast majority of which are BYD autos.

“It’s the most humbling thing I’ve ever seen,” Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, told Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson. “We are in a global competition with China,” he went on. “And if we lose this we do not have a future at Ford.”

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