The star of this week’s Shanghai Auto Show is a safety shirt-yellow electric car called the BYD Seagull. The car’s looks aren’t sensational. It’s the price: 78,000 yuan, or $11,300, for a vehicle that can travel 190 to 252 miles between charges, depending on the battery pack.
That is half the price of electrified vehicles currently on the Chinese market, and an even smaller fraction of the price of most electric vehicles sold in Europe or the United States.
That sound you hear is a collective “oh $@&!” from the executive suites of every rival automaker.
The Seagull is the lead bird in a flock of more affordable EVs shown off in Shanghai this week. The message: China’s EV makers and battery manufacturers are cracking the code to build electric cars that can compete head-on with the costs of combustion vehicles, and not just in China.
Industry executives anticipate a wave of Chinese EVs headed for export markets, starting with Europe. One top supplier executive forecast Chinese models could capture 8% of the EU market.
China’s battery manufacturers are keys to the game. CATL, the world’s largest EV battery maker, used the Shanghai show as the stage to preview a new, more energy dense battery executives said would be capable of powering civil aircraft.
Maybe. But CATL said the batteries will be deployed in electric cars later this year. Watch that space.
