ELECTRICS AS SHARE OF TOTAL VEHICLE SALES
EXCLUDES COMMERCIAL VEHICLES; SOURCE: WOOD MACKENZIE
PURE ELECTRICS PLUG-IN HYBRIDS
IN THE U.S. 0.8%
1.3%
0
1
2%
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
IN CHINA
0
1
2
3
4%
1.1%
3.3%
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
GLOBAL PURE-ELECTRIC VEHICLE SALES, 2018
CHINESE MANUFACTURER OTHER
EXCLUDES COMMERCIAL VEHICLES AND HYBRIDS.
SOURCE: BLOOMBERG, EXCEPT TESLA: NUMBER FROM MANUFACTURER
TESLA
BAIC (BJEV)
BYD
NISSAN
ANHUI JIANGHUAI
CHERY
ZHEJIANG GEELY
HAWTAI
RENAULT
DONGFENG
245,240
151,524
105,237
87,875
67,683
65,157
54,554
53,042
45,886
44,671
FOCUS
26
FORTUNE.COM // APR.1.19
will determine whether they can finally outflank Tesla’s contro-
versial CEO, Elon Musk. And for China, the competition will test
whether the country’s industrial push has advanced to the point
where homegrown companies, such as BJEV, can best Western
rivals in a still- fledgling industry in which global leadership has
yet to solidify.
China’s electric-vehicle market is forcing “the international
automakers to accelerate their electric-vehicle strategies globally,”
says Kou Nannan, a Bloomberg analyst in Beijing.
BJEV, founded in 2009, is a unit of state-controlled Beijing
Automotive Group, or BAIC Group, one of China’s biggest auto-
makers. In February, Ma Fanglie was named to lead the unit,
which has around 6,000 employees. His predecessor left, the
company says, for “physical and family reasons.”
In written answers to questions, Ma acknowledges BJEV’s
challenges. With subsidies falling, he asks, “how can new-energy
vehicles impress consumers?” As for the Western auto compa-
nies piling into China, their “brand accumulation and technical
strength cannot be underestimated,” he says. But BJEV knows
the Chinese market and is scrambling to improve its vehicles, says
Ma: “We believe that the competition between car companies is to
see who has more blood and who is bleeding slower.”
Pure electrics accounted for 3.3% of new passenger-car sales
in China in 2018, up from 0.7% in 2015 and more than double
the U.S. share of 1.3%, according to Wood Mackenzie. Together,
pure electrics and plug-in hybrids accounted for 4.5% of China’s
market in 2018.
BJEV sold about 152,000 pure-electric cars in China in
2018, according to Bloomberg. That was nearly 50% more than
the number of pure electrics sold by China’s No. 2 manufactur-
er, BYD. Adding plug-in hybrids, BYD was China’s top maker
of vehicles that plug into a socket, selling 248,947 of them last
futures. Tesla, General Motors, Volkswagen,
and BMW are ramping up their presence.
The Chinese electric-car race has big geopo-
litical, economic, and environmental stakes.
For the planet, what happens in China will
be the biggest test yet of whether electric
cars can meaningfully displace gasoline cars,
with potentially huge repercussions for the
oil industry and the climate. For the world’s
conventional-auto giants, embarrassed by
Tesla in the electric-car race’s first stage—the
one in the West—the scramble on Chinese turf
Some Chinese
cities give electric-
car owners green
license plates,
which bestow
certain driving
privileges.
A showroom
(far right) for BJEV,
the biggest maker
of pure electrics
in China.
