The rate at which China has rebuilt its car industry is truly staggering
After starting off slow, China’s EV industry has reorganized itself in record time, going from a global laggard to a global leader in about 5 years – showing other countries how it ought to be done.
In 2020, China was still early in its EV transition, lagging behind many other countries and regions. With EVs only consisting of 5.4% of the country’s car market, it lagged behind California and almost all of Europe – even the slower-adopting countries, like Romania. It was only barely ahead of the 4.6% global average that year.
It set a relatively unambitious goal of 50% EV sales by 2035 – and those 50% didn’t even need to be gasoline-free, they could be hybrids or plug-in hybrids which still have a gas engine inside (what China classifies as “New Energy Vehicles” or NEVs). Around that time, both California and Europe were thinking about banning gas car sales by 2035 – and each of those targets probably could have been earlier, too.
Now, with 2025 coming in just a week, China is likely to hit that 2035 target ten years early – closer to the year that it set the target than the year that the target was set for. It even moved its target forward to 45% NEVs by 2027 this January… and exceeded that target within less than a year.
It’s an indication of how much China is able to do when they put their minds to it – and how other countries have completely failed to keep up due to bickering and resistance from companies or governments being hostile to better technology.
The rapid rise in Chinese EVs
2020 was a turning point for the Chinese EV industry. China responded strongly to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (and as a result, had a lower death rate than almost any country, despite life within China being relatively normal after initial lockdowns), which meant a large drop in vehicle sales in the country (much like the rest of the world).
But when sales recovered, China’s eyes had turned inwards. Not only had domestic EV makers started to ramp up production rates and quality (after a decade of smart industrial policy focusing on mineral supply and encouraging domestic manufacturers), but the rest of the world had spent years blaming China for all sorts of ills (like carbon emissions, which China was criticized for not doing enough about, and now is criticized for doing too much). Technology blockades and discussions about tariffs led to consumer nationalism, with Chinese consumers expressing interest in domestic goods more than they had before.
This, coupled with new emissions rules that the rest of the world’s automakers hadn’t prepared properly for (despite having 7 years notice) led to a glut in gas car supply – mostly from foreign brands – which we called the “canary in the coal mine” for where the global ICE car market was going.
Chinese auto dealers could have responded to this by asking the government to reverse the rules, but instead they asked for (and were granted) a six month amnesty in order to clear unsold cars off of their lots, and otherwise demanded that auto manufacturers shape up and build EVs faster.
As a result of this mentality, China became the top global exporter of automobiles this year – a title that Japan had for decades.
Meanwhile, the West drags its feet
It’s a stark difference to how automakers and governments usually behave in the West (and in Japan), working to slow down transitions and add protectionist measures instead of gearing up for an inevitable change in the industry that already started.
And the regressive portions of Western governments are all too happy to oblige, with for example the US republicans promising to hold the US auto industry back even further, ensuring it isn’t ready for the present, and their far-right ilk in European governments arguing for similar measures.
President Biden’s administration did do its part to try to turn US industrial policy around to be ready for EVs with the excellent Inflation Reduction Act, which brought hundreds of billions in investment and hundreds of thousands of EV jobs to the US. Biden’s EPA and DOT also improved several emissions rules (despite softening them somewhat after industry pressure) to move the industry forward. But it also implemented large tariffs, which could help to breed complacency.
But unfortunately for America, the next occupant of the White House is convicted felon Donald Trump, who finally received more votes than his opponent on his third attempt (despite committing treason in 2021, for which there is a clear legal remedy), with less than half of the country voting to ensure that US manufacturing fall further behind.
In his last stint squatting in the White House, the EPA knowingly worked against clean air and instead of preparing the US to lead the EV transition, it focused on petty losing squabbles with states that are actually trying to move the US forward. We could have had smarter industrial policy, like China, but instead government worked to shatter the regulatory certainty that President Obama had helped to lay out.
Luckily, most Western auto manufacturers may have learned their lessons, and this time they’re finally asking government not to blow up emissions rules. They recently donated money to the famous narcissist, presumably hoping to get in his ear – we’ll have to wait and see whether what they say is actually geared towards the future (and whether the ignoramus they’re saying it to is even able to comprehend it). Though that could all be for naught, because one of Mr. Trump’s closest allies is Elon Musk, CEO of the largest EV maker in the US, who has confusingly focused his advocacy on harming EVs.
Change is coming faster than you think
China’s rapid rise in EV sales, meeting targets well ahead of schedule, may seem anomalous at first blush. It’s not often that a target gets met in one third of the time allotted for it, especially when you’re dealing with a country of 1.5 billion people. That’s a lot of inertia to turn around.
But there are other examples of targets getting met and exceeded early, and companies and governments need to be aware of these and maintain flexibility instead of fighting in the face of positive change.
Norway is one example, where the country was already far ahead of the international community, and set a target to end gas car sales by 2025. While there are still a trickle of non-EVs sold in the country, Norway’s market was already over 90% electrified in 2021.
This is not uncommon with technology adoption curves, as once a technology reaches a critical mass, most consumers consider it the default and will switch to it without much issue. That critical mass has already been met in most Northern European countries and in China, but other places could get there fast.
Once they do, who do you think will come out for the better – the countries and companies whose manufacturing base is ready to supply products that fuel that change, or the ones that have spent decades bickering and trying to slow it down so they can continue spewing poison in all of our lungs?
And as I’ve ended several articles in recent years: we should have been doing more earlier, but as the famous (possibly Chinese) proverb says, “the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is today.”
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The ChargeX Consortium has figured out how to automatically restart failed EV charging sessions at fast chargers so drivers don’t have to.
Every EV driver has been there. You plug in, walk away to grab food or run errands, and expect your battery to be juicing up at a DC fast charger, only to return and realize nothing happened. Maybe the session failed, or maybe the charger glitched. Either way, you’re stuck unplugging, plugging back in, and now it’s going to take twice as long to charge.
The ChargeX Consortium (National Charging Experience Consortium), which is made up of researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Idaho National Laboratory (INL), and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), along with industry stakeholders, has come up with a smart fix for one of the most frustrating parts of public EV charging: failed sessions.
Its new report highlights the benefits of what it calls “seamless retry” – a hands-free tech solution that automatically restarts failed charging attempts. In other words, the driver no longer needs to physically unplug and replug the charging connector when a charging session fails.
The consortium’s new tech is designed specifically for DC fast charging. The “novel mechanism” automatically resets both the EV and the charger, then restarts the session in the background, so drivers don’t have to return to the car – or even have to think about it.
Ed Watt, a researcher at NREL and lead author of the “Recommended Practice Seamless Retry for Electric Vehicle Charging” report, said, “With a seamless retry mechanism in place, an EV driver at a retail center can plug in a charging connector, provide user input data, leave to shop, and feel confident that they will return to a charged vehicle.” (Click on the report link to see the specifics of how the novel mechanism works.)
The researchers didn’t just focus on the perks of seamless retry – they also looked at potential downsides. One concern was the extra time it might take for the system to restart a failed session, which could leave drivers frustrated. To tackle that, the consortium suggests that the EV industry provide transparency in the form of real-time status updates, insights into what went wrong, and recommendations based on the type of charging failure and number of attempts made.
Going forward, as the user experience becomes clearer, more work will fine-tune seamless retry. The ChargeX Consortium will keep refining the system – developing smarter, more targeted retry methods, ironing out implementation details, and running verification tests to make sure everything works seamlessly in the real world.
Read more: The latest US EV sales and charger growth – in numbers
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Tesla’s Chief Financial Officer, Taneja Vaibhav, and the head of Tesla’s board of directors, Robyn Denholm, have just sold tens of millions of dollars worth of Tesla (TSLA) stocks.
Elon Musk’s brother is also selling.
Public companies must report insider stock trading by critical executives and board members to the SEC.
For Tesla, it’s a very limited group for a company of that size:
And they are not buying the stock. In fact, they are almost exclusively selling.
Today, Tesla reported two new sets of transactions in SEC filings.
Chief Financial Officer Taneja Vaibhav confirmed that he sold 7,000 shares for $2,681,770.
He was able to acquire those 7,000 Tesla shares at $18.22 as part of his stock option plan. He sold at an average of $383, and the stock closed at $374 today.
Robyn Denholm, Tesla’s chairwoman, sold 112,390 shares at an average price of $384.04, for a total value of $43,162,255.60.
She also got the shares as part of a stock option plan. Denholm had to return tens of millions of dollars worth of Tesla stocks to the company after settling a lawsuit over excessive compensation brought by shareholders.
Tesla’s entire board settled for nearly $1 billion:
Tesla wrote in the filings that both Vaibhav and Denholm sold as part of stock option liquidation plans adopted last year.
Today, Tesla released another SEC filing to disclose that Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk’s brother and Tesla board member who also was part of the excessive compensation settlement, is selling 75,000 Tesla shares through Morgan Stanley for $27.5 million.
In his case, it doesn’t appear to be linked to a liquidation plan.
Electrek’s Take
Kimbal is known to have great “timing” with his Tesla stock sales. It will be interesting to see.
It’s wild to see these board members getting absurdly rich while the company has erased its growth and is heading into one of its worst quarters in years.
All while they sit on their hands and do nothing while they are the only ones who could do something about the CEO, who seemingly engages in fireable offenses every day.
Tesla has one of the worst corporate governance of any major companies I’ve ever witnessed.
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After announcing its electric vehicle business lost over $5 billion in 2024, Ford could face even more headwinds this year. Despite the threat of new tariffs and fewer government incentives, CEO Jim Farley stressed Ford is still “really confident” in its EV strategy. Farley said that Chinese EV makers are becoming a major global force, and even with tariffs, Ford needs to beat them “straight up in a street fight.” This is the electric car he was referring to.
Ford reported fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, beating Wall Street’s top- and bottom-line estimates. Despite posting $48.2 billion in Q4 revenue, Ford’s model e division reported an EBIT loss of $1.4 billion.
The EV business lost $5.1 billion last year after losing $4.7 billion in 2023. On the company’s earnings call, Farley said new competition led to increased pricing pressure. Ford expects Model e to lose another $5 billion to $5.5 billion this year. In total, the company is forecasting an adjusted EBIT of $7 billion to $8.45 billion in 2025.
Like GM, Ford did not factor in the potential impacts of tariffs or other changes in policy by the Trump administration.
Farley explained on the call that “There’s no question that tariffs at 25% level from Canada and Mexico, if they’re protracted, would have a huge impact on our industry, with billions of dollars of industry profits wiped out and an adverse effect on the US jobs.”
Ford’s CEO said he looks forward to working with government leaders to ensure they are “strengthening, not weakening our nation’s auto industry.”
The tariff situation, growing demand for the latest tech and software, and “the Chinese OEMs growing to become a global reality,” Farley said, “these dynamics will all play out for some time to come.”
Ford CEO warns Chinese EV makers are a global threat
Ford sells some electric cars outside of the US, including the new electric Puma, Explorer, and Capri models, launched in Europe, so it does have an idea of the changing market dynamics.
After accounting for 8% of car sales in the US last year, Farley said EVs are growing, and “people who buy these vehicles don’t go back to combustion.” He added that it is a “very vibrant market” and a “global capability for Ford.”
As a global player, it will need to compete with Chinese EVs, which Farley has previously called an “existential threat” to the industry. During the earnings call, Farley touched on the subject, saying they continue to expand and are becoming “a major force in our industry.”
After Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas asked, “Do you think that U.S. tariff policies will be successful in keeping Chinese EVs out of the US market long term,” Farley said the topic “is really pertinent to us.”
Ford’s CEO added, “The level of subsidies that these companies have in China is very material as well as these are digital vehicles with digital footprints and really deep into people’s digital life.” Farley explained, “On the kind of unfair part or the subsidy part, I think we’ll have to sort that out as a country.”
At the end of the day, “the company has to stand on its own.” Ford will work with government partners to make it a level playing field, but “in the end of the day, it’s management’s responsibility to beat the SU7 straight up in a street fight.”
The SU7 is Xiaomi’s first self-developed electric car. After shipping one to the US and driving it for a few months, Farley called it “fantastic” and didn’t want to give it up.
After launching the SU7 last April, Xiaomi revealed it had already delivered over 135,000 models in 2024. The SU7 starts at around $30,000 (215,900 yuan).
Ford is betting on its low-cost platform, which is being developed by a team of former Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, and Apple engineers, to help it compete.
The first models, due out in 2027, are expected to be a smaller electric pickup and SUV, starting at about $30,000.
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