The combination of fuel economy regulations, a new-energy vehicle quota system, government fleet mandates and direct purchase subsidies all added regulatory pressure and incentives for both automakers and consumers to go electric.
The policies still matter, but recent BloombergNEF analysis shows EV adoption is now running well ahead of what’s required purely from national regulations and policy targets.
City-level policies are still playing an important role because they make it difficult to get a new licence plate for internal combustion vehicles in China’s major cities, but even that isn’t enough to explain why adoption is rising so quickly.
There are many factors at play when a consumer technology starts to take off.
Technology maturity, cost competitiveness and word of mouth all play a role.
In China’s EV market, there’s another factor at play, namely that homegrown EV startups have helped transform perceptions of the vehicles there.
There was talk a few years ago about how many of these startups risked being wiped out by stricter technology standards.
Lo and behold, some not only survived but are growing sales quite quickly.
Xpeng, Hozon New Energy Automobile, Li Auto, Nio, Leap Motor and WM Motor are now selling almost 150,000 EVs a quarter, about 7% of the global total and up more than 10-fold from the beginning of 2020.
These startups are less likely to be designing vehicles strictly to comply with regulations, as some Western, Japanese and Chinese automakers with legacy businesses have done.
They have no legacy business to protect, know subsidies won’t last forever and that their products need to stand on their own feet quickly.
China’s EV startups also have made a combined push on digital services, in-car connectivity and customer-service experience concurrently with their electrification efforts, which has helped shift the perception of EVs from one of compliance and regulation to one where you access the coolest tech, and get treated well in the process.
They’re not alone, of course. Other dynamic auto companies are pursuing a similar strategy, and the startups’ share of sales is still relatively small compared to the likes of Tesla and BYD, which sold 255,000 and 354,000 plug-in vehicles globally last quarter, respectively. But the startup numbers are still significant.
They’re ramping up quickly and will probably top 250,000 a quarter next year.
The group getting squeezed by all this is established global automakers, many of which deliberately slow-rolled their EV programs and are now scrambling to catch up with respect to their model lineups and battery supply.
As recently as 2020, international automakers had 61% of the total auto market in China. That’s declined to 49% so far in 2022.
Setbacks on software and disputes with local partners are not helping, and with China’s EV sales rising fast, it’s getting harder to see this market share trend reversing.
While Western automakers are seeing their share of the Chinese market shrink, China’s EV startups are quickly expanding in Europe.
MG Motor, owned by SAIC, sold 40,000 EVs in Europe last year, while groups like Nio, Xpeng, BYD and others have been testing the waters with smaller numbers in countries such as Norway.
All of China’s startup automakers plan to significantly increase their international presence in the next few years and some of them are launching very cost-competitive EV models to further that goal.
There’s a window open for them in Europe right now, because the region’s vehicle CO2 regulations don’t tighten again until 2025.
Many established automakers have slowed down their EV rollout accordingly. With Tesla, BYD and these EV startups all at the gate, this may not be a wise strategy.
There are probably still some bumps in the road ahead.
Making cars is still difficult. But it’s remarkable how fast perceptions of what’s possible can shift.
In 2019, China proposed what was then widely viewed as a stretch target of having new-energy vehicles represent 25% of passenger vehicle sales by 2025.
That number now looks like it will be achieved this year, a full three years ahead of schedule.
China’s EV startups have played an important role in making that happen.
