China’s EV Export Era Is A Bigger Geopolitical Move Than We Normally Acknowledge – CleanTechnica

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It’s clear to anyone following the global EV market — the Chinese EV market is much bigger than any other EV market (it accounts for about 50% of the global EV market all by itself), Chinese EV producers now absolutely dominate their home market, and some of those Chinese EV producers are now rapidly expanding and trying to grow their sales via exports as well as domestic sales. This just makes basic business sense. There’s a significant technology transition, you have the opportunity to lead it, and you thus do your best to grow and expand geographically.

However, there’s more to it than that.

The 1900s was the oil and coal century. Fossil fuels enabled a new kind of growth, a new era of development that built our modern world. They didn’t just shape our world physically, though. They shaped our world geopolitically.

The US became the biggest economy in the world for many reasons. There was unparalleled innovation and invention. There were a couple of “world wars” and our prominent roles in them. There was Hollywood, which is probably still underrated in how much it has influenced the world. And there was our leading role in the extraction, use, and export of oil. Not only that, though — our military spread out across the world to protect our oil interests, to protect others’ oil interests, and, in many ways, to impress our authority and control on others.

As Chinese EV producers increasingly export their electric cars around the world, it’s not just a pure business move in which they are looking to gobble up market share everywhere from Ethiopia to Panama to Colombia to New Zealand to Indonesia. Yes, that’s surely what’s driving individual companies. However, from a country leadership perspective, there’s so much more at play. As the USA’s control of the oil industry and the oil-fueled auto industry diminish — or, I should say, as the oil industry’s importance and influence around the world diminishes — there will be much less deference to USA’s wishes, much less respect for USA’s wishes, much less care or even hearing of USA’s wishes. Chinese companies will be more and more popular, more and more important, and will allow people to be more and more energy independent. When it comes time to turn to an economic and political giant for guidance, to curry favor, or for all sorts of alliances, the USA will be forgotten more than in the past, and China will come to mind and have preference more than in the past. China will drive the world geopolitically more and more by the year as US oil holds less and less importance.

When there are BYD dealerships in cities around the world — from Nairobi to São Paulo to Santiago to Chiang Mai to Wellington to Perth to Paris to London — and no one cares what the price of oil is, expect that China will have a much bigger role in the world than it has even today. The 1900s may have been USA’s era to shine, but it sure looks like the 2000s will be China’s.