- China’s industry had built capacity for 20 million EVs and plug-in hybrids annually but remained saddled with enough factories for 30 million gasoline vehicles
- Fossil-fuel vehicles accounted for 76% of China’s auto exports since 2020 with annual shipments jumped from 1 million to likely >6.5 million in 2025
China’s electric vehicle (EV) industry captured half its domestic market in just a few years, crushing sales of gasoline-powered vehicles from once-dominant global automakers.
But foreign players were not the only losers. Many Chinese legacy automakers also watched their sales collapse – and responded by flooding the world with fossil-fuel vehicles they could not sell at home.
While Western policymakers have focused on the threat of China’s heavily subsidised EVs, protecting their markets with tariffs, US and European automakers face greater competition from China’s gas-guzzlers in countries from Poland to South Africa to Uruguay. Fossil-fuel vehicles have accounted for 76% of Chinese auto exports since 2020, and total annual shipments jumped from 1 million to likely more than 6.5 million this year, according to data from China-based consultancy Automobility.
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The boom in China’s gasoline-powered exports is driven by the same EV subsidies and policies that wrecked the China businesses of automakers including Volkswagen, General Motors (GM) and Nissan by underwriting scores of Chinese EV makers and igniting a devastating price war, a Reuters examination found. The phenomenon highlights the far-reaching impacts of Chinese industrial policy, as foreign competitors struggle to keep pace with government-backed firms chasing Beijing’s goals to dominate critical sectors nationally and globally.
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China’s gasoline-vehicle exports alone – not including EVs and plug-in hybrids – were enough last year to make it the world’s largest auto-exporting nation by volume, industry and government data show.
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Chinese carmaker SAIC’s exports – mostly of its own brands, without [former joint venture partner] GM – soared from nearly 400,000 annually in 2020 to more than a million last year.
Dongfeng’s exports of nearly 250,000 vehicles last year, up almost four-fold in five years, proved critical as sales of its China partnerships with Honda and Nissan entered a “downward spiral,” said Jelte Vernooij, Dongfeng’s Central Europe manager.
Dongfeng’s annual global sales have fallen by a million vehicles since 2020, to less than 2 million, company filings show. Yet Vernooij is not worried about Dongfeng’s future – because it has Beijing’s backing.
“The fact that we’re state-owned is key,” he said. “There’s no question that we will survive.”
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China’s top auto exporter is Chery, whose global sales rocketed from 730,000 vehicles to 2.6 million between 2020 and 2024. Chery, which has both state and private owners, grew annual exports over the period by about a million units – relying mostly on the gasoline-powered vehicles that comprise four-fifths of its sales. China’s top 10 exporters include five other state-owned automakers and two private ones, Geely and Great Wall Motor (GWM), that also sell more gasoline vehicles than EVs.
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Only two of China’s top 10 auto exporters focus exclusively on battery-powered vehicles. One of them is US electric-car pioneer Tesla. The other is BYD, which sells only EVs and plug-in hybrids.
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Chinese automakers’ rush to export gasoline cars can be traced to government policies that created a glut of factory capacity to build them.
China’s rapid EV growth idled assembly lines capable of producing up to 20 million gasoline-powered cars annually, estimates Automobility CEO Bill Russo. Such unproductive overhead raises costs, pressuring automakers to repurpose capacity for exports.
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[Chinese] automakers got cheap EV factories financed by [Chinese] cities and provinces eager to demonstrate development.
“Local governments even prepare the land and build the factories, allowing companies to 'move in with just a suitcase,'” said Liang Linhe, chairman of Sany Heavy Truck, among China’s largest truck makers.
The result: massive overcapacity. At a March EV conference, Su Bo, China’s former vice minister of industry, urged regulators to promote the conversion of gasoline-car factories to build battery-powered models. He estimated China’s industry had built capacity for 20 million EVs and plug-in hybrids annually but remained saddled with enough factories for 30 million gasoline vehicles – far more than its domestic market needs.
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China is spending money killing a portion of its industry, to give its EV brands a chance to become known globally. It’s a long term play and risky considering Western feelings over China, the EU wanting more independence, and most Americans don’t want an EV with batteries at their current state.
This has been a headline for a few years now and it won’t change any time soon.
most Americans don’t want an EV with batteries at their current state.
That’s a risky assumption given how driven by propaganda this is. The reality is current state of batteries is perfectly fine for most Americans. What if they realize that? It does partly depend on charger availability, which is being rapidly built out despite the efforts of the current administration to block that. What happens as Americans realize how many new chargers are near them?
China could literally solving world hunger and the US press would complain about it being a plot to ruin US farmers.
It would be, though not just US farmers.
Any country that sends large amounts of food, clothes, etc. as aid wrecks the domestic production and sustainability. Why would anyone work to establish a farm or textile production when you can get imported rice or castoff T-shirts for almost nothing?
Same as when Nestle gives away just enough free baby formula for the mother’s milk to stop, so then they have to keep buying formula. If China (or any other country) drives an industry into the ground, then the community is dependent on the imports.
There’s also no question that, for now, gasoline cars are selling better in second-tier markets, such as Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa, with scarce EV-charging infrastructure.
Longer term, Beijing aims to dominate EVs and plug-in hybrids globally. But in the interim, many Chinese automakers are building overseas brands by giving customers whatever they want.
Blessed be the AliExpress empire. May the orange dragon rule for all of eternity
Chinese EV makers, led by Build Your Dreams (BYD)…
BYD is short for Biyadi. Who writes this shit?
@pHr34kY@lemmy.world
It could be a backronym, where the meaning of something is changed after the name is selected to fit the name. I mean, the company is Chinese. I doubt that they initially chose an English-based name, but they sure could have adopted it later.
searches
And yes, at least according to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Company
“BYD” is the pinyin initials of the company’s Chinese name Biyadi. The company was originally known as Yadi Electronics (亚迪电子), named after the Yadi Road in Dapeng New District, where the company was once based.[23] According to Wang Chuanfu, when the company was registered, the character “Bi” (比) was added to the name to prevent duplication, and to provide the company with an alphabetical advantage in trade shows.[24] As the name “BYD” had no particular meaning, BYD started adopting a backronymic slogan “Build Your Dreams” when it participated at the 2008 North American International Auto Show in the US.[25][26][27]
EDIT: Ah, @ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml already pointed this out.
It’s a backronym, but one used officially by the company, including having it on their vehicles.
It’s an LG situation where they come up with a bacronym motto that sorta replaces the name. It’s less scary for global markets to buy a Build Your Dreams.
