Revista de Economie Mondială (Dec 2022)
ARE ELECTRIC VEHICLES CHINA’S WINNING BET?
Abstract
The electric vehicle (EV) industry was selected as a national priority in Made in China 2025 (MIC2025) industrial strategy and has benefitted, as such, from all the attention and support provided by the Chinese state. The development of this industry presented itself as a solution by which China could eventually outperform the West in the global car market, where it couldn’t manage to assert itself in spite of all the efforts made, because it had never been able to master well enough the internal combustion engine technology and its complex fine tuning. This paper looks at China’s progress in the emerging purview of the EV industry –which builds upon a newer, but simpler and more easily replicable technology –, keeping track of Chinese domestic market developments, in terms of supply, demand, prices, local actors, market segments and specifics and providing, at the same time, a brief view on the accomplishments attained, as well as on the risks and challenges China still has to overcome, in its race for global dominance in this field.
