The global electric vehicle boom that Western politicians once assumed they would lead is now being shaped somewhere else entirely. The center of gravity has shifted toward a different industrial model, one that treats batteries, minerals and mass manufacturing as strategic assets rather than side projects. The result is an EV landscape where Western automakers are slowing or retreating just as a rival ecosystem hits scale.
I see a widening gap between the rhetoric of climate leadership in Europe and North America and the hard numbers coming out of the world’s most aggressive EV market. That gap is not just about who sells more cars. It is about who controls the supply chains, sets price points for the Global South and defines the next generation of battery technology.
China’s scale advantage is now the market
Any honest look at the EV revolution has to start with China, because the country has turned what was once a domestic industrial policy into a global export machine. Analysts now describe how the electric vehicle market inside China has reached “unprecedented scale” and “Market Dominance Solidified,” with local brands saturating their home roads and then pushing outward through aggressive pricing and rapid model cycles. A detailed Chinese market review notes that this dominance is not a future scenario but a present reality, built on years of investment in factories, charging networks and consumer incentives.
Globally, EVs are no longer a niche. One major Market Forecast for 2026 points out that “Global EV” sales hit 18.5 m units in 2025, a figure that includes light passenger vehicles and commercial models. Another industry analysis puts total worldwide EV sales at 20.7 million units in 2025, with growth of 20 percent year on year, and notes that this surge is happening even as some markets wobble. According to that report, Amid these changes the Canadian market actually shrank after subsidies were pulled, and EV sales there are projected to decline by 29 percent in 2026. The contrast is stark: where policy and industry align, volume explodes; where they diverge, the market stalls.
From policy bet to export onslaught
The current moment is the payoff from a long bet. Years ago, Beijing framed electric mobility as part of a broader industrial push often summarized as Made in China 2025, a strategy that deliberately shifted focus toward “hard tech” such as concrete, copper and manufacturing capacity. One recent analysis argues that this pivot was designed in part as a response to the West, which Chinese planners view as an existential threat in key technologies. By pouring capital into battery plants, refining and assembly lines, China built an EV ecosystem that could undercut foreign rivals on cost while still moving quickly on innovation.
That strategy is now visible in export patterns. One expert, Jack Barkenbus of Vanderbilt University, describes how China’s electric vehicle influence is expanding nearly everywhere except the United States and Canada, as local brands flood Europe, Latin America and parts of Asia with competitively priced models. Another report from China Factor describes a “Spreading” trend in which ACE vehicles (autonomous, connected and electric) in China are now cheaper than ICE equivalents, a price inversion that is beginning to ripple into export markets. When ACE beats ICE on sticker price, the traditional Western advantage in brand prestige starts to look fragile.
BYD and the new price of entry
No company embodies this shift more clearly than BYD. Once a battery maker, it has become a full spectrum automaker whose global ambitions are spelled out on its own BYD site, where it showcases a lineup of pure electric and plug in hybrid models aimed at every major region. In many emerging markets, BYD is now the reference point for what an affordable EV looks like, with compact sedans and crossovers priced well below comparable European and US vehicles. A separate analysis of the Global South notes that “Right now, low cost Chinese producers such as BYD dominate this space,” offering models that undercut Western brands by thousands of dollars while still meeting local expectations on range and features.
That affordability is not an accident. It is the product of a supply chain that runs from lithium and nickel processing to cell production and final assembly, much of it anchored in China. A detailed look at the Global South market explains how these low cost Chinese producers are able to sell vehicles “well below prices for comparable European and US vehicles,” a gap that Western firms struggle to close without similar control over materials and manufacturing. For policymakers in Africa, Southeast Asia or Latin America, the choice is increasingly between getting EVs on the road quickly via Chinese imports or waiting for Western brands that may never match those price points. That is how industrial strategy in Shenzhen and Shanghai turns into air quality and fuel import decisions in Lagos or Lima.
Battery tech and a global patchwork
Underneath the visible cars is a quieter race over batteries. A recent Feb analysis of what comes next for EV batteries in 2026 describes a “global patchwork” in which different regions move at different speeds on chemistry, charging and regulation. In this patchwork, Chinese firms hold a commanding position in lithium iron phosphate cells and are pushing into sodium ion, while Western companies focus more on high nickel chemistries and solid state prototypes. The same report notes that this uneven landscape is not likely to change soon, because the capital costs of battery plants and the complexity of supply chains lock in regional advantages.
For Western automakers, that patchwork is a problem. Many of them outsourced battery expertise early on, assuming they could buy cells on the open market once demand materialized. Now they find themselves dependent on suppliers tied to China, even as political pressure mounts to “de risk” supply chains. The same battery outlook notes that the near future of the EV industry looks “drastically different depending on where you are standing,” a polite way of saying that Europe and North America are scrambling to catch up while Chinese firms consolidate their lead. When I look at the investment timelines for new Western gigafactories, they read less like a plan to leapfrog and more like an attempt to narrow a gap that keeps widening.
The West’s great EV retreat
At the very moment Chinese brands are scaling up, several legacy Western automakers are pulling back. A widely discussed video essay on “THE GREAT EV RETREAT” argues that by cancelling or delaying electric programs, these companies have committed “the most consequential strategic blunder in the history” of their industry. The clip, shared widely in late Dec, frames this as a historic misreading of demand and policy, with executives betting that consumers will tolerate slower electrification just as competitors flood the market with cheaper, better equipped models.
There is evidence that this retreat is already reshaping global influence. One detailed assessment of how China’s EV revolution threatens to leave the US behind points out that ACE vehicles are gaining market share quickly in China and are expected to keep expanding their share in the coming years. The same report lists multiple “drivers of this paradigm,” from consumer acceptance to infrastructure build out, and uses them to explain the lagging adoption rate in the United States. When I compare that with the Canadian case, where EV sales are projected to fall sharply after subsidy cuts, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Western policymakers and automakers are blinking just as the competition doubles down.
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