Tag: Electric and Hybrid Vehicles

European Union Will Investigate Chinese Subsidies of Electric Cars

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The European Union will begin an investigation into Chinese subsidies of electric vehicles, the bloc’s top official announced Wednesday, in a move that highlights Europe’s growing industrial and geopolitical competition with China. Chinese automakers have gained a dominant position in the world’s electric vehicles industry and see Europe as a big potential market. Automakers in Europe, who are racing to expand their battery-powered lineups, have expressed concern that they face tough competition against low-priced models from China. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, announced the initiative…

China Is Full of Risk For U.S. Companies

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For decades, America’s corporate chieftains saw China as a money spinner. They gushed about its hundreds of millions of consumers, called it “one of the biggest opportunities” and made predictions that this would be “China’s century.” Now, those executives have come away from recent visits to the country with a more sober view. Western companies doing business in China are facing pressures that were unimaginable several years ago. The country’s economy is floundering and its relationship with the United States is strained. Three years of border restrictions and an effective…

Toyota’s Dominance Threatened by Rise of Electric Vehicles

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Rachel Culin considered herself a Toyota loyalist, one of millions of people who appreciated the company’s reliable and fuel-efficient hybrids. But she recently bought an electric Chevrolet Bolt to replace her Toyota Prius because the Japanese automaker had been too slow when it came to selling electric vehicles. “Where are the options for those people who love Toyota?” Ms. Culin, a resident of Mesa, Ariz., said. “It’s really sad.” Once the leading brand for environmentally conscious car owners, Toyota has failed to keep up with changing consumer preferences and a…

China Is Flooding the World With Car Exports

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At a time when many of China’s exports are faltering and its consumers are spending less at home, the country is flooding the world with cars. Overseas demand for inexpensive vehicles made in China, mostly gasoline-powered models that Chinese consumers now shun in favor of electric cars, is so great that the biggest obstacle to selling more abroad is a lack of specialized ships to carry them. Chinese automakers have leaped to dominance in Russia since war began in Ukraine, transporting cars by train. The companies have also captured large…

Chinese Cars Star at Munich Auto Show, Underscoring German Economic Woes

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For decades, the phrase “Made in Germany” signaled cutting-edge automotive technology and design. But now German automakers are falling behind in the global race to produce more electric vehicles, and some executives are using a new catchphrase to describe how quickly they need to catch up: “China speed.” The term reflects the rapid transformation of the Chinese car industry into a battery-powered juggernaut. And that speed was on display Monday at I.A.A. Mobility, a massive auto show in Munich, with newcomers from China stealing the show. BYD, an all-electric Chinese…

What Can Replace China as a Global Economic Engine?

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This is not a trivial matter. To an extent that few Americans genuinely appreciate, global growth has been powered by the so-called Chinese miracle for almost half a century now. According to World Bank data, between 2008 and 2021 — as the world’s per capita G.D.P. grew by 30 percent and China’s by 263 percent — China accounted for more than 40 percent of all global growth. If you excluded China from the data, global G.D.P. over that period would have grown not by 51 percent but by 33 percent,…

When Great Power Conflict and Climate Action Collide

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Produced by ‘The Ezra Klein Show’ The global decarbonization effort is colliding headfirst with the realities of great power politics. China currently controls more than 75 percent of the world’s electric vehicle battery and solar photovoltaic manufacturing supply chains. It also processes the bulk of the so-called critical minerals, like lithium, cobalt and graphite, that are essential to building out clean energy technologies. There is no clean energy revolution without China. What would happen if China decided to weaponize its clean energy resources in the same way Russia recently weaponized…

How Geopolitics Is Complicating the Move to Clean Energy

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He is known as the Minister for Everything. From the government offices of Indonesia’s capital to dusty mines on remote islands, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan commands authority as the nation’s essential power broker. A four-star general turned business magnate turned cabinet officer, Mr. Luhut’s paramount aspiration is transforming Indonesia into a hub for the production of electric vehicles. But as he pursues that goal, he and his country are increasingly vulnerable to geopolitical forces beyond their control. Though this archipelago nation has long sidestepped entanglements in ideological rivalries, it is increasingly…

Volkswagen Seeks to Regain Edge in China as It Cuts Delivery Forecast

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The Numbers Volkswagen said its after-tax earnings fell by 20 percent in the first half of the year, to 8.5 billion euros, or $9.45 billion, compared with the same period last year. But overall revenue increased 18.2 percent as the company stemmed some of its losses in China, where deliveries were down 1.2 percent. Western Europe provided the company with its strongest business, with 1.65 million vehicles ordered in the first half of the year, and 200,000 of them — or 12 percent — were electric vehicles, the company said.…

Lawmakers Challenge Ford and Chinese Battery Partner Over Forced Labor

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A partnership between Ford Motor and a major Chinese battery maker is facing scrutiny by Republican lawmakers, who say it could make an American automaker reliant on a company with links to forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. In a letter sent to Ford on Thursday, the chairs of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the House Ways and Means Committee demanded more information about the partnership, including what they said was a plan by Ford to employ several hundred workers from China at a new…