US Losing of Technological Lead to China

First loss of EV technology.

I think it boils down to false pride (hubris) and lack of customer commitment and respect — in a term, “profit uber alles.”

as China rose from obscurity and poverty, Western carmakers saw huge profits in the market. China insisted on joint ventures. For the OEMs, this meant immediate and vast profits. For the Chinese, it meant technology transfer. In the long game, the latter has proved to be much more important than profit.
The EU finally has woken up to that fact.

And the China influx EV to EU likely was a cause of that realization.
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https://insideevs.com/news/785541/ev-sales-surpass-gas-cars-europe-first-time/
EVs Just Outsold Gas Cars In Europe For The First Time

Europe hit a historic milestone as EV sales surpassed gas cars for the first time, despite geopolitical headwinds.
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Can Europe compete with a “real” EV industry and trade wars on its doorstep?
China has been capturing EU market share. I believe it has risen to 13% in 2025. Competitive pricing & quality are key factors.

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Dominance of China EVs in World
https://eastasiaforum.org/2025/12/04/chinas-ev-dominance-sparks-eu-retaliation/
In 2022, the sales volume of EVs in China reached 25.6 per cent of the total sales of new cars
In 2024, China sold 12.87 million EVs, accounting for 40.9 per cent of the total new car sales.
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The US-China AI battle is currently being waged to see which country will dominate.

“As super-sized AI companies from both countries are set to list this year, stock markets will serve as an indicator of where global capital is more willing to invest: the U.S. or Chinese AI ecosystems.”

While China cannot yet match the U.S. in scale, it is steadily increasing the size and appeal of its domestic stock markets. By blocking overseas listings of AI star companies that would have previously chosen the U.S., and easing regulations to encourage domestic listings, it is fostering growth.

As the US and China’s priorities on advancing AI diverge, what could emerge moving forward is both dominating AI niches rather than one dominating the whole.

“That seems to be the trend — the US has a definite lead in AI chips, though China is catching up in LLM, and is poised to get ahead in certain AI governance areas,” Xiaomeng Lu, director of Geo-technology at the US-based political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, told DW.

China is driven by demographic issues to push toward robotics rapidly.

In 2024, the country’s population fell by 1.39 million people, contributing to a shrinking workforce.
With 2.03 million robots now in operation , China has the largest industrial robot fleet in the world, far ahead of Japan (450,000), the United States (400,000), and South Korea (392,000).

  • Fully automated car plants could arrive by 2030 led by Chinese brands.
  • Hyundai recently said it will employee robots at its Georgia plant by 2028.

And now the Renewable Energy battle.

The renewable energy transition is still chugging along globally, thanks in part to the US oil industry, and China is among the nations poised to reap the rewards.

In years past, the Gulf economies would wither in the face of competition from US oil producers. Not any more. The clean energy transition has provided them with a powerful, economy-building alternative driven by the force multiplier of innovation.

The big question is what China expects to gain from wind and solar resources in a distant region. The investor dollars and workforce opportunities alone are substantial, but Zhang has a more hands-on relationship in mind. As the Gulf states transition to a decarbonized economy, China aims to complement the region’s intermittent wind and solar resources with its energy storage products and other clean tech gear.

“Unlike fossil fuel extraction, which relies primarily on resource availability, renewables hinge on precision equipment (e.g., lasers and vacuum deposition for high-efficiency batteries and photovoltaic cells) and intelligent grid management to accommodate variable wind and solar inputs,” Zhang notes.

“For the Gulf states, which possess substantial resource wealth alongside varying levels of high-tech research and development, manufacturing and infrastructure capabilities, partnering with China provides a practical route to industrial upgrading, enabling deeper integration into supply chains through joint ventures and technology transfers,” she emphasizes.

I can see our president bellowing;“Hey! That’s our sand box!”

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/11/06/chinas-clean-energy-revolution-will-reshape-markets-and-politics
China is making more money from exporting green technology than America makes exporting fossil fuels.

Will China be the cause of defeating climate change?

Using satellite data, Keck School of Medicine of USC researchers reported the first statistically significant decrease in nitrogen dioxide linked to zero-emissions vehicles.

This CANNOT Stand!!!

Oh yeah.

Chinese automaker BYD plans to sell 1.3 million vehicles in overseas markets in 2026, a roughly 25% rise from its 2025 international deliveries of 1.04 million, bolstered by new production plants in Thailand, Uzbekistan, Brazil and Hungary.

Biotechnology is also at risk of China taking over. 60 Minutes followed a biotechnology competition for students in Europe. The U.S. sent one team. 8 or the 10 winning teams were from China. They have well educated, hard working researchers. New meds likely will come from China. Just like rare earths and lithium this seems to be another technology China plans to dominate.

Blocking AI chips to China means they will develop their own. They will become a competitor.

Robotics is another they plan to dominate.

No question China is ambitious and a strong competitor.

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The US doesn’t take EV seriously, for the most part. There is more profit in making fossil-burners, especially monster fossil-burners. So, that’s what “Detroit” does. Couple that with a large number of politicians who are climate-deniers and fossil-fuel advocates, and it’s a struggle here.

Though I am seeing a surprising number of non-Tesla EVs (in the Phoenix area). So they are gaining some traction. An inexpensive faster-charging battery would be a game changer. Hopefully my investment in that area will pay off (it was a gamble, and I knew it).

The word “losing” in the thread title indicates present tense, as in “currently happening”.

I would submit it “has happened”, we just haven’t woken up to it yet. We chased short term profits while China worked on building a long term vision. We seem unable to do that, unless there are short term profits to be milked (hard) along the way.

You might say we are trying now with AI, but I’ll be surprised if China lets us get away with it for long; the best uses of it are probably not summarizing Facebook comments and Google results, but putting it to work in automobiles and robots, and we are running fast just to stay in place in both those industries.

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I don’t understand why this post was moved to Hybrid & Electric Vehicles.
EVs was just one aspect of losing technological edge to China. I brought up robots and green energy. Another poster brought up biotech.