Is Tesla on auto in China?

Zoë Schiffer: Can you talk to me about this relationship? And also, what is Tesla in China? Is it considered a popular, cool car still?

Zeyi Yang: It is still something like, because for the longest time, Chinese car brands are considered as more than foreign brands. Tesla still has this halo like this American electric car company. But he loses it as we talk. In addition, when it comes to the relationship between Tesla and China, I sometimes forget how far back it is. There is a very interesting figure that we need to talk about. His name is Juanglong. He was a Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technology. In general, the General Ministry of Innovation in China. He went to San Francisco in 2008 and tried one of the passengers, one of the first electric cars that Tesla made. As he came from the automotive industry, he was an electric car. That’s how all this began. Then, from Musk’s first visit to China in 2014, he met this man again. He really tried to insist on selling his car in China, and later we know that he built Gigafactory in Shanghai in 2020. This is a long story of how Musk and Tesla entered China. But what we know so far is that China is one of the most productive Tesla facilities. This is also one of the biggest markets for Tesla. Tesla absolutely cannot lose China.

Zoë Schiffer: This is fascinating because we know that with other technology companies like Google and Meta, they have really tried, difficult to enter China and have not been so successful or completely failed in some cases. But Elon Musk managed to prevail. Do we know why it was?

Zeyi Yang: I think this helps that he works on a car company instead of a social media company because there is so much control over information and the Internet in China. While if you just make a car, it doesn’t really go through those red lines that China has. Also, it just helps that China has really thought of China in the last two decades: “Maybe I have to bet on an electric vehicle like the future of transport.” He welcomed Tesla that he is part of his big experiment, as well as an investment to build an EV Empire. That is why Tesla becomes a very central part of it and has contributed to what China has achieved so far.

Zoë Schiffer: Well, this leads to my next question because China has invested really strongly in electric vehicles. In part, in my opinion, to reduce his dependence on the import of foreign oil. How is this going so far?

Zeyi Yang: That goes quite well, I’ll say. Yes. China does not have a rich oil reserve and imports oil from many other places in the longest time. That is why the Chinese government has always been very careful about this, because if, for example, a World War War happened, these oil supplies would be cut off. What will he do? I think in the early days I will say in the early 2000s, the idea of ​​electric vehicles was the idea of ​​a moon photo. Where they thought, “Maybe, if one day all cars would be powered by electricity, then we no longer need to import this oil and we would be much more secure if the war broke out.” Then they really started investing in the survey of batteries and electric vehicles with stock funds at college. But then this gradually led to the construction of Chinese companies. They strongly subsidize any car company that can make a product that needs to work on the road and customers can buy. All this, after years of heavy costs, has led to what we have at the moment, which is a thriving electric vehicle market in China. I think the most recent data say that more than 50 percent of users when they try to buy a new car, they go for an electric rather than a gas car. This is quite remarkable.