In China cars made are cars sold with regards to GDP
Yes China is subsidizing just about everything, but my main question is who is buying these cars.
Africans, Cubans…. don’t imagine average Chinese can afford these things and/or have a place to plug them in.
You need to travel more. I was in Shanghai in 2024 BYD and Nio where everywhere our rental was a BYD (NEV) a plug in hybrid. It looked like a 3 series BMW and drive fantastically. There were charger poles around the edges of every condo complex and apartment block and huge Bucees sized fast DC charger places with 25 plus stalls their grid is triple phase 440 volt everywhere they build a modern grid not a 19th century 120v/240v split phase monstrosity. Triple phase 440 volt is 240 volt phase to ground the everyday voltage. So it takes 3 wires only in delta to get Triple phase 440 AC which their GB/T EB plug uses natively. 63 amps at 440 is bone standard thats 72kw just from the average pole mounted L2 the GB/T fast DC was demonstrated retail at 1000 amps and 1000v for a megawatt no one else on earth has put 1MW fast DC into commercial use and BYD vehicles can use it that means 3-5 min 10% to 100% charges.
As for the average Chinese they are buying them China has a middle class larger than the entire population of the USA or the EU. The numbers speak for themselves.
“In 2024, China registered 11.25 million new NEVs, a year-on-year increase of 51.49 percent, accounting for 41.83 percent of all new vehicle registrations.”
https://cnevpost.com/2025/06/10/shanghai-nevs-1-5-million/
Their taxis and busses are all NEVs too. Clean modern and safe as well.
“The city added 1,940 new energy buses in 2024, bringing the total number of such vehicles to 16,356, accounting for 96.21 percent of all buses.
In 2024, 2,700 new energy taxis were put into operation in Shanghai, with 95 percent of the city’s taxis now being NEVs.”
They don’t tolerate crime or an underclass. Shanghai put NYC to shame in modernity it’s like stepping into a futuristic movie everything is new modern LED screens that are building sized. AI driven cars are everywhere they have been doing L3 FSD since at least 2024 in commercial service. We are so far behind , it’s old folks coping and coping hard. China is two countries it’s rural is nothing like it’s urban the urban economic zones have special economic laws they are CINOs communist in name only, entrepreneurship is the norm and small business is cut throat and everywhere. Oh and tax evasion or laundering is a death sentence so is loan sharking. They are accurately one party cronie capitalists which is not all that far from the two party cronie capitalist system we have here. To underestimate them is a mistake they will have more solar capacity by 2028 than the sum total of the entire US grid capacity all in and they are building 150 new nukes on top of that and a Texas worth of wind every year as well. Their rate of infrastructure build out is unmatched anywhere, plus two huge hydro power to be used to back up all that wind and solar those hundred gigawatt plus projects each are the “batteries” when the sun shines and the wind blows they hold the way water back when it doesn’t and at night they spin the water turbines it’s elegant and simple. They already have the 1 million volt DC lines to send that power to the cities in the east plus 1 million volt AC lines to distribute it once in region. They are the only country on earth with a supergrid 32 million volt lines and they keep building more. The USA better start doing similar or it will be China’s century.
There is not enough gas in North America nor gas turbine production capacity to build out terawatts of energy for the AI war nor for the manufacturing basses. At the terawatt levels shale gas goes no less thn a decade as a petroleum Geo this is fact. It’s a matter of scale only nuclear, solar and wind and engineered geothermal can scale to multiple hundred terawatts of energy needed for the 21st century economy.
Humans have the storage tech today right now to absorb gigawatt at a time in dense locations or underground using the earth itself as the storage unit. Right now this second power in Texas is $2.48 megawatt hour that’s 2/10s of a cent per kWh ERCOT curtailed gas first then wind as the sun came up solar is ripping today and it’s the cheapest form of energy in Texas consistently under $5 MWh and will go negative today around noon. Energy storage allows you to buy at near zero and sell it back at 8 tonight when the gas turbines spin up burning $4.4 MMBTU gas which is $20 per megawatt hours just in fuel LHV alone to break even turbines need $50 and it will be $60-80 tonight on the wholesale auctions. Yes I am a power producer with a VPP so I see in real time the bids, calls and closings.
Texas has been adding solar like gangbusters to cover our AI hyper scalers and bitcoin mining, plus Tesla is cranking out megapacks for the load leveling and arbitrage opportunities. Elon is an adopted Texan we love him.
In inflation adjusted money Texas power got cheaper as we added the nation’s most wind AND solar by far.
Here is the comparison to the other states in inflation adjusted money, solar is the fastest growing energy source in Texas we will have 75,000 megawatts worth by 2030 that’s just what has been financed and permitted more is coming. That more than doubles the size of the Texas renewables you add in the 40,000 megawatts of megapacks also financed permitted and approved those are 4 hr minimum rated packs could be 8s but to be permitted they are minimum 4. Which means we have the equivalent of 40 new 1GW nukes for any four hour peak demand period coming.
https://x.com/JessePeltan/status/1990816983772705226
How much did wind and solar actually make in total megawatt hours yon ask? More than natural gas combined cycle turbines. Peaker and simple cycle are in purple and only 7% of the total about what our two nukes made.
https://x.com/JessePeltan/status/1990813803336941855
This speaks for itself.
Remember all Republican controlled government all three branches in Texas for 20+ years.
Also a open for profit grid with 15 minute rolling bids by power producers to the wholesale market directly via the legislature created ERCOT entity.
Look at the blue and yellow bars there is a clear signal being sent.
https://x.com/mattbuford/status/1990815065537130764
Texas at least is not being left behind we need to build out French levels of new nukes we have Aalo in Austin that will go first critical in their sodium reactor by July 4 they already shipped there reactor from their factory in Austin to the national lab they are one of 3 others the DOE picked to go crit. Once they NRC cert they will be Henry Ford them at their Austin factory. They plan on 90 days from signing the PPA to first power eventually and sub 3 cent per kWh of they can get MOX fuel then they can do fuel cycles into the decades mark and sub 2 cent per kWh is a real thing. Fast breeders or breed and burn in this case opens a world of electricity billions of years worth vs 50 with PWR or BWR tech. We must burn Pu239 not U235 one is made from U238 that’s 99.93% of earth’s uranium the other is 0.07% and 0.02% gets left behind from the beginning. So only 0.05% makes it to get burnt and the spent fuel still contains 0.09,% of the original 5-8% enriched it’s a crime against humanity to bury spent fuel and should be to use it at all in a PWR or BWR only fast spectrum reactors should be built.