中国如何主导全球电动汽车工厂热潮

Chinese EVs have been flooding into ports around the world for years, but is less visible is the global manufacturing footprint and supply chain. Chinese firms are building country by country. We're facing a situation where companies like BYD from China are becoming essentially the new GM's and Ford's of the EV era, and they're benefiting from scale from building out these global supply chains, from long term investments all around the world.

And they will be increasingly difficult to dislodge. Competition at home, demand abroad and trade barriers have all pushed Chinese automakers to invest heavily all over the world, just as the US has pulled back. This means China is becoming more than an EV manufacturing powerhouse within its own borders. It's poised to be the face of the global automotive industry of tomorrow. As we know, the companies and countries that control the energy technologies and energy systems that we rely on will dictate the terms of power and prosperity around the world.

Here's a chart from Atlas Public Policy, a think tank that tracks investments in clean energy. Chinese investments in orange, U.S., and blue in 2021 and prior U.S. auto companies outpaced Chinese firms by a lot in the following three years. The situation completely flipped. This is how it happened. China's domestic auto market has become brutally competitive. You see price wars, heavy discounts, really, really subsidized financing from the automakers themselves.

You see local governments piling in, wanting to build more factories, even though there seems to be a tremendous amount of capacity for production. The net effect of that within China is it's a really tough place to make profits. So what's the next alternative? The next alternative is to export or to look to global markets. And it turns out there has been tremendous demand around the world for Chinese cars and parts.

Virtually everywhere except for the US. You see Chinese EV companies rapidly gaining market share. Here's a chart on battery exports since 2019. And this one on EV exports. Chinese EVs and batteries have become so popular. Governments have grown worried the deluge will hurt their own industries. The US, of course, has effectively blocked Chinese EVs from its market, but the European Union has also put tariffs in place.

This is the key piece. One way to get around trade barriers is to build factories in or near the countries they want to sell cars. So China has done that. Whether or not those tariffs existed at that time, or whether Chinese companies were anticipating those tariffs, that is the core driver of a bunch of these investments. In a way, tariffs have forced Chinese cars to get creative, make investments around the world that cement their lead in the global EV automotive industry.

They are constructing a global supply chain and establishing closer ties with countries around the world where they are investing. At the same time, the US has pulled back on EV investments both domestically and abroad. Analysts and researchers I spoke with said these are the effects. First, Chinese firms stand to take more market share all over the world. China is also investing a lot abroad, right? It's still strong.

We found that it's covered around 30% of total Chinese FDI. And to me, what it shows is it will accelerate this trade of market domination that's currently via export. Second, these investments stand to accelerate China's technical lead over US firms. This has a wide range of implications that they are zero emission has, of course been the critical driver of interest in EVs around the world. But electric cars are arguably also the best platform for the seamless integration of a bunch of other increasingly important automotive technologies software, entertainment systems, sensors, and all of the technology that underpins automated driving and autonomous vehicles.

Robotaxis really need to have an EV platform for a whole bunch of reasons for control, for being able to efficiently handle acceleration, braking, and steering. And all of that means that the future is really EVs. Beyond that are what Chan calls spillover effects. Ev demand pulls forward innovation in battery technology, drivetrain tech sensors, the cockpit or vehicle experience, and all the tech that comes with that.

And that has spillover effects into other industries that are actually kind of connected, like robotics. It may take longer than some people had hoped for, and it may happen in different at different speeds around different parts of the world, but that's the direction the industry is heading in. And the US really risks falling behind. It's also important to consider how these factories build deeper ties between China and these host countries.

If you have a factory in a town in Hungary or in Indonesia that employs 3000 people, then all of a sudden you have a state and a federal government that are invested in that company, that are invested in that government, that are invested in those workers, and will put in place a bunch of supports to ensure that that company is able to, to, to stay strong within the domestic market. China's doing a process that I call industrial diplomacy.

The countries that they are investing in or allowing their companies to invest in, are encouraging their companies to invest in are not random countries. They're countries where China either has a pretty good relationship or seeks to cultivate a better one. There are limitations. For one thing, foreign direct investments are tough to track. Different groups have different figures for just how much money Chinese firms have invested abroad.

There's a lot of investment that we just categorize simple like rumors. There's also a lot of projects that just never went through. Meier also said there's risks in making apples to apples comparisons between US and Chinese companies. American made cars may not face the same tariff pressures, so American firms might have less incentive to build factories. They also might have factories in some of these countries already, so they might not need to build as much.

Going forward, there's a few things to watch. Trade barriers if countries lower them, China might decide to slow its pace of direct investment and rely more on exports. Clean tech policy A lot of what drives the appetite for Chinese EVs is environmental regulation. If countries continue to adopt rules that favor zero emission vehicles, that will, of course, trigger demand for Chinese products. And of course, there's China's own export policies.

Finally, you have concern from China itself. China is more and more concerned about technological leak, right? So as I said, China is leading in manufacturing of EVs, manufacturing of batteries. And, you know, if you were to invest abroad and build this factory, the risk is perceived is that the technology could be transferred to a local player. So China is putting on regulation and also active informally to try to hinder this phenomenon.

But the numbers are stacking up. Rhodium Group estimates China received 3 to 4 times more EV and battery investment than the US domestically, and Meyer estimates Chinese investment outpaces U.S. firms by about 4 to 6 times internationally. Chinese EV exports far outpace U.S. ones. Foreign direct investment is another indicator that China is quickly becoming an incumbent that is difficult to dislodge. We're tracking the beginning of a really big, I would argue, sort of global restructuring of the auto industry.