At pole position, China vrooms EVs for global lead

Chinese electric car brands may be lagging their foreign counterparts such as Tesla at present, but they will likely sizzle and sparkle over the next decade in the global auto market, just as Chinese smartphone labels such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus and Realme have grown rapidly globally to give the Apples and the Samsungs a run for their money.

Chinese consumers' growing enthusiasm for new, tech-enabled automobile experiences, coupled with auto companies' constant push to integrate cutting-edge technologies into cars, and favorable government policies are all creating the perfect ecosystem for the electric vehicle industry in the country, they said.

Fu Bingfeng, secretary-general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, said three factors can fuel the transformation of the automobile sector: technological advancements, government policies and consumption.

"When it comes to the trend of cars getting increasingly intelligent, consumption has played a big part. But consumers' enthusiasm is not directly related to the automobile sector. It is driven by the popularity of smartphones," Fu said.

According to him, smartphones have shaped modern consumer habits like using internet-enabled smart services. Such consumer preferences are informing car-buyers' decisions these days, particularly in China, given the booming mobile internet industry in a nation that boasts the world's largest number of netizens.

China's pioneering role in the rollout of 5G infrastructure could help even domestic car companies. The latter can use latest telecom technologies to test their smart cars, thus intensifying car-buyers' desire for new experiences, said Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Information Consumption Alliance, a telecom industry association.

According to a research report from McKinsey& Co, a global management consulting firm, Chinese consumers it surveyed showed a willingness to pay as much as an extra $4,600 as premium in order to be among the first buyers of driverless vehicles. For perspective: their counterparts in the United States and Germany were willing to pay an extra $3,900 and $2,900, respectively.