Why China is beating the U.S. in Electric Vehicles | CNBC

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“All-electric and self-driving vehicles have the potential to make the world a better place.” General Motors

The global electric vehicle market is heating up and China wants to dominate, according to CNBC. Historically, China has lagged far behind North America and Western Europe in vehicle innovation, design and production.

The country has invested at least $60 billion to support the electric vehicle (EV) industry and it’s pushing an ambitious plan to transition to all electric or hybrid cars by 2035. Tesla entered the Chinese market in 2019 and has seen rapid growth.

China sold roughly one million more EVs than the U.S. in 2020. But there are signs the U.S. is getting more serious about going electric.

President Joe Biden announced a goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and investments in green infrastructure. Additionally, POTUS announced plans to replace the federal government’s fleet of cars and trucks with electric vehicles assembled in the U.S.

As of 2019, the U.S. government had 645,000 vehicles that were driven 4.5 billion miles and consumed 375 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel, according to the General Services Administration (GSA).

General Motors (GM) announced recently that between 2020 and 2025 they will invest more than $27 billion in EV and autonomous vehicles (AV) product spending, exceeding GM’s gas and diesel investment.

Cadillac’s first fully electric EV

Furthermore, GM has a “vision of a future with Zero Crashes, Zero Emissions and Zero Congestion” and they plan to produce 30 new global EVs by 2025 in which forty percent of the company’s U.S. entries will be battery electric vehicles during that time.

The CNBC video details how China came to dominate the market and whether it’s too late for the U.S. to catch up.

Yet, by mid-decade, GM is aiming to sell a million EVs per year in their two largest markets – North America and China and they’re committed to be carbon neutral in both their global products and operations by 2040. Eventually, GM intends to offer EVs across all their brands and span the global EV market from low-cost EV vehicles to the upscale Cadillac CELESTIQ.

References:

  1. https://www.gm.com/electric-vehicles.html
  2. https://www.gm.com/masthead-story/electric-vehicles-AV-EV.html
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