China to dominate global electric car market – Quartz

This story is part of an ongoing series on how China is restructuring our world.

Is the future of electric cars in China? If you only look at the sales figures, it seems so. In 2018, more electric cars were sold in China than in the rest of the world.

Government policy – rather than the market economy – has created the electric car boom in this country. For nearly 10 years, the Chinese government has been investing in the electric vehicle industry by offering generous tax incentives and subsidies to automakers and consumers, building charging infrastructure across the country, and imposing restrictions on power generation. sale and use of gasoline cars.

As a result, electric vehicles have become an important part of the daily life of Chinese people without this happening in countries like the United States. And there is no better place to see it than in Shenzhen, a southern city dubbed "China's Silicon Valley". Shenzhen is the only city in the world to have 100% electric buses. It is also home to BYD, the world's second-largest maker of electric vehicles in 2018 after Tesla.

In 2018, Quartz traveled to Shenzhen to show how much the government's efforts in favor of the electric car have resulted in many changes in public transit and in the city's landscape. For the Chinese government, developing electric vehicles is not just about the environment. He sees electric vehicles as an opportunity to surpbad competitors and become a major automaker. The country best positioned to compete in the electric vehicle market could now dominate the global automotive market. And China hopes his name is on this list.

A version of the above video was posted on Facebook on November 15th. 2018.