There's a lot of hype about Chinese EVs—is any of it true?

And why wouldn’t people want them? The average price of a new vehicle in the US in 2025 rose to $50,326 by year’s end. That’s up from ~$40,000 in 2020 and $35,000 in 2015. (Those numbers are for the mean; the medians are slightly less, but the difference is not great.) Despite the sharp increase in 2020 caused by the pandemic and its associated supply shortages, average sales prices appear to have risen relatively linearly over time, according to Cox Automotive’s data set. And according to Federal Reserve data, wages have also grown steadily (much of it in the lower four quintiles during the Biden administration). Those jobs are indeed at risk if China were to flood the US with cheap imports. China has been directly subsidizing its green industries to dominate those in Europe and the US (above and beyond the kinds of consumer-facing incentives that the EU and, until recently, the US, also provide). But the advantages of the Chinese car industry go far beyond that. Chinese average wages are a quarter of those in the US, and being able to throw more workers at a factory while still keeping overheads lower than your rivals gives Chinese OEMs a cost advantage. Even more favorable financing terms with suppliers, or not having to pay to license foreign intellectual property, gives them a real boost, according to analysts. That’s why the European Central Bank blamed Chinese competition for causing 240,000 job losses, many of them in the auto industry. There’s plenty of alarm sounding from industry executives right now, too. Ford CEO Jim Farley, who spent months driving Chinese cars daily, said last week that there’s enough excess capacity in China’s car industry to easily swallow the 12 million or so cars currently bought each year in the US. And Koji Sato, outgoing president and CEO at Toyota, warned last month that Japanese automakers were doomed unless they could learn to match the speed of innovation of their new Chinese competitors. The other stated reason for blocking Chinese cars is the threat to privacy and national security. Again, there are valid concerns here. Just ask the Chinese government, which stopped allowing Teslas to drive near its military bases and other sensitive locations more than five years ago, although that ban was recently dropped after Tesla began complying with Chinese data-security rules. Among those rules? For almost a decade, Chinese automakers have had to hand over copious amounts of data on their customers’ driving habits to their government. For all the breathless coverage we read (or see on TikTok or Reels, perhaps), it’s very rarely mentioned that those Chinese EVs aren’t nearly as cheap when they’re imported into Europe. Yes, they’re undercutting the competition, but once the cars have been specced to meet European expectations, they might cost more than double their Chinese retail price. So the cars are a few thousand euros or pounds cheaper than established alternatives, but they’re hardly the bargains the Internet has promised you. The small, short-range EVs that predate or co-existed alongside those—let’s call them second-gen lithium-ion EVs that began with the Model S—were compliance cars, offering maybe 150 miles of range on a good day. Unsurprisingly, America turned its nose up at them. The gas-powered Smart Car didn’t even suffer from an EV’s long recharging times or higher purchase price, and no one can credibly pretend those were a sales success here, either. The marketeers might have pushed people from sedans to SUVs, but they’re not responsible for an environment in which every street has to be wide enough for two fire engines—that’s on your local fire department and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Policies can push things the other way. Kei cars are popular in Japan not because of an inherent preference for tiny cars but because you can’t buy a car in Japan without having a parking space for it, and a tiny Kei-sized space is much cheaper than one large enough for a compact car by European, American, or Chinese standards. I recently contacted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to see if there’s been any movement on the Trump edict to bring them to US roads but have not heard back for a couple of weeks now. But that’s what Chinese OEMs are offering, and that’s what we’re told rivals the invention of the presliced breadloaf in the grand discussion of “best things.” Think of every trend in the automotive industry of the last decade that you hate, and you’ll probably find plenty of it baked into new Chinese EVs. (On the other hand, LED headlights that also work as movie projectors are kinda cool—not gonna lie.) Are we truly crying out for even more of a smartphone experience in our cars? I don’t know about you, but when I’m behind the wheel, it’s a guaranteed time of day when I can’t and won’t be doomscrolling. If the point is to give me something to do while I’m charging, why won’t the phone I already have work? And that’s before the vehicles are crammed full of AI. Chinese automakers have become a new vanguard in the nation’s latest five-year plan, with a “revolution” spanning design and production, as well as in-car features like letting you give vague, natural-language directions instead of specifying a specific destination. One might think that last bit of news would land like a lead balloon among communities with a high degree of disgust for AI. Then again, perhaps not. Principles like solidarity with workers or a commitment to road safety or being distrustful of AI are easy to maintain in the abstract if all they require is the occasional post on the Internet or social media.