High-Voltage Competition at the China Auto Show: Highlights in Electric Car Racing

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This week in the Shanghai auto show, global and Chinese car companies are going to exhibit more than a dozen new electric vehicles like SUVs, sedans and sports cars. This is the first time for them to display cars for sale here in four years as this place is used for testing out electric, automated and other types of technology.

Car companies are working hard to create electric cars that are faster, more luxurious, and full of features. The Chinese government has invested a lot of money in this new type of car so they can be ahead of the competition. There is stiff competition between the well-known brands and the Chinese car makers.

Executive workers from America, Europe and Japan can finally visit the world’s biggest auto show for the first time since 2019. Before this December, travel to China wasn’t allowed due to the virus. Even though some auto shows happened during the pandemic but they were on a limited scale. People from foreign countries couldn’t come and the events were organized by staff of their China offices.

Last year, out of the 23.6 million cars sold worldwide, 5.4 million were electric and 1.5 million were hybrids that ran on both petrol and electricity. These numbers represented over a quarter of all car sales and accounted for two-thirds of all the electric vehicles bought in the world. Researchers foresee an even bigger uptick in such purchases this year with prediction to rise by 30%.

People are not as interested in buying cars that run on gasoline. This is a big problem for foreign companies who want to do business in China, according to John Zeng from LMC Automotive. To be successful, these companies need to show their best electric vehicle (EV) products.

The government in Beijing is no longer providing support for electric vehicles (EV’s). So, car manufacturers are having to put a lot of effort and money into creating EV models with interesting features at affordable prices. To save costs, a lot of companies are teaming up together. At Auto Shanghai 2023, which is the world’s largest expo center, will be filled with all the latest EV models from different manufacturers.

VW, the most popular brand in the country, will have 28 new cars to show people. Half of these cars can be powered by electricity. VW will give us a first look at the ID.7 limousine that can travel 435 miles after a single charge.

BYD Auto, which is a car company that makes electric cars and competes against Tesla Inc. for being the world’s biggest-selling carmaker, will be showing off its brand new U9 supercar for the first time ever – and it’s going to have a price tag of one million yuan (or $145,000 US dollars) on it! What’s really cool about this car is that it can go from zero to sixty miles per hour in only two seconds!

In 2017, China had the highest auto sales ever of 24.7 million vehicles. But in 2020, due to COVID-19 pandemic lock-downs, sales decreased to 20.2 million cars. Even though car sales are slowly going up again, they still haven’t reached their pre-pandemic highs yet.

The Chinese government is trying to make their country successful and powerful by encouraging people to buy electric vehicles (EVs). They believe EV technology can bring wealth and respect on the global stage for China.

A campaign has caused problems between China and other countries. Because of this, these other countries are denying access to certain types of processor chips that are used in smartphones, electric cars, and other technological devices. But unfortunately, China can’t make the particular processor chips needed for things like artificial intelligence or advanced functions.

During the first three months of 2023, a lot more people bought either an electric car or a hybrid car. In total, they sold 1.6 million gas-electric hybrids and pure-electrics cars. Out of these sales, 1.2 million were purely electric vehicles and 433 thousand were hybrids – that’s a 75% increase in sales from last year!

In January, Tesla and some other car brands reduced their pricesby 5-15%, even though their sales were still quite high compared to the sluggish U.S. and European markets. This caused warnings that all of these smaller car makers might merge together or even go out of business. China and the U.S. are also leading in developing self-driving cars and trucks.

Baidu Inc., which people know as a search engine website, has created self-driving vehicles just like Pony.ai and the Geely Group (which makes Volvo Cars, Lotus, and Polestar). Huawei Technologies Ltd. have also built their own self-driving mining and industrial cars.

Baidu and Pony.ai have received special licenses from the Chinese government to operate driverless ride-hailing services in Beijing in 2022. This means that there will be a safety driver on board just in case of any emergency. 18 months before this, Alphabet Inc’s Waymo started using driverless cars for ride-hailing services in Phoenix, Arizona. Jason Low from Canalys mentioned that he is seeing strong support from the government for such services.

At the auto show, Chinese brand Aito will be showing off their M5 SUV featuring a special type of tech called ‘autonomous’. This technology was made with help from Huawei Technologies Ltd. The U.S recently put up sanctions on Huawei because the two countries have some disagreements about new technologies.

Electric cars are getting popular in China even though most people prefer regular gasoline-powered engines for their vehicles.

BMW AG is announcing that all its vehicles coming to the Auto Shanghai event will have electric power. It says it will introduce two new cars — the i7 M70L and XM Red Label — as well as show its M760Le in China for the first time.

In addition, Maserati from Italy — a company known for using powerful Ferrari engines — will be showing their first-ever electric SUV there too and its own electric sports car will get an exclusive premiere in Asia.

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) brand NIO Inc. is planning to show off their latest SUV, named ES6. It says it can travel up to 610 kilometers (380 miles) on one full battery charge.

Mercedes Benz also plans to introduce a luxury EV SUV under the name Maybach and two more other SUVs too, which they are working on with two car companies: BYD Auto and Geely Group.

Toyota is releasing two new electric cars, Nissan has a special concept car, and Honda is showing off a prototype for its Chinese market. However, according to LMC’s Zeng, Western and Japanese brands need to work harder on their electric vehicle production as China is progressing quickly in this field. He thinks that they take too long to make models abroad while not involving the help of Chinese engineers.

Zeng said that the cars brought to China are not as up-to-date compared to Chinese models, because they are three to four years behind in terms of driving range and technology. To keep up with China’s pace, they need to start designing and testing their cars specifically for the Chinese market.