CHINA IS ACCELERATING THE END OF THE COMBUSTION ENGINE

By Anne Bourgoin

Since the 2000s, the government has spent huge sums of money on subsidies and reliefs in addition to allocating contracts for electrified public transportation, forsaking the gasoline engine, a market they cannot compete with. And it’s paying off! The Chinese market now has more than 94 brands and 300 models of EVs and more than 5.8 million charging stations have been installed in the country, according to the government.

China dominates the EV market with 60% of global sales and more than half of the world’s EVs on the road are in China, according to the IEA (National Energy Agency). “There is now a proliferation of electric products in China and that changes the whole market [. . .] They gave up developing gasoline engines because they couldn’t compete with the rest of the world. So they thought, ‘With electric vehicles, we can get ahead of everyone else,’” explained Mike Johnstone, a senior Lotus executive, at the Shanghai auto show.