China Will Lead an Electric Car Future, Ford’s Chairman Says
By
DEC. 5, 2017
China now appears to be behind that wheel. The government has taken a major role in electric car development and is pushing to dominate the market. Beijing hopes the push will add to its technological know-how, help address its pernicious pollution problems and curb its dependence on oil imports from politically volatile countries.
To achieve this, China is offering global automakers enticing financial carrots and threatening them with weighty regulatory sticks. State-controlled automakers have begun putting massive investments into electric car production. Meanwhile, Beijing has mandated that automakers must start selling large numbers of electric cars and plug-in hybrid cars or risk losing their right to sell gasoline-powered cars in China, now the world’s largest auto market.
“Certainly having the full weight and power of the Chinese government behind it gave them a pretty good head start,” said James Chao, a China automotive analyst at IHS Markit.
China is already the world’s dominant producer not just of electric motors but of practically all their components. Chinese companies even mine most of the valuable minerals, called rare earth metals, that go into the tiny magnets often used to make many of the motors.
Volkswagen has said that together with its Chinese partners it would
to introduce 25 models of electric cars in the Chinese market between 2020 and 2025. VW already planned to bring 15 electric models to the country by 2020.
