https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-breaking-china-ev-supply-chain-dominance/
China’s Stranglehold on EV Supply Chain Will Be Tough to Break
Asia’s largest economy has a deep stranglehold on battery production, leaving global carmakers dependent at one point or another on Chinese partners. The country’s battery makers supply some 80% of cells worldwide, backed by a mining and processing chain that increasingly resides in the country’s hands.
https://insideevs.com/news/733376/ev-jobs-harris-trump-cm/
China has a pretty iron grip on the EV battery supply chain. Now it’s targeting the next big thing: autonomous driving through AI, according to a new Wall Street Journal report.
https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/after-evs-china-seeks-to-dominate-ai-powered-autonomous-driving-3d58a7ec
After EVs, China Seeks to Dominate AI-Powered Autonomous Driving
Startups such as XPeng roll out new models with more driver-assistance features while U.S. scrutiny grows
Competition is intensifying in driver-assistance software—one pathway to full autonomous driving—among startups such as XPeng and national technology champions including Huawei. To speed up innovation and drive down costs, they are using artificial-intelligence techniques to mimic human driving patterns and navigate cars through many traffic situations, although the latest models still require a human driver to stay alert and at times take control of the car.
*Compared with the U.S., where Tesla has been at the forefront of driver-assistance technology in cars sold to consumers, China offers some advantages for companies that could accelerate progress. *
About half of new cars sold in the country are electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids. Advanced driving technology consumes electricity because of the sophisticated computers on board making split-second calculations, and electrified vehicles provide a more stable power supply than lead-acid batteries in gasoline-powered cars, industry analysts say.
And China’s tech-savvy consumers, many of them relatively new to driving, are more open to ceding vehicle controls to a computer. In a survey last year by PwC, 85% of Chinese consumers said they were comfortable with autonomous driving that doesn’t require human action or supervision compared with 39% of American consumers.