Message from Shanghai Auto Show: China Is A Global Leader in Innovation

This year’s Shanghai auto show has a clear message for visitors: China is now a global leader in innovation, and it wants the world to know.
According to CNN, the massive, thrumming exhibition that took place in the country’s financial capital over the past two weeks boasted over 60 football fields of floorspace, packed full of carmakers using the event to unveil a raft of new models with curtain-pulling reveals.
To a soundtrack of bass-thumping music, big brands showed off everything from electric batteries that can run for hundreds of miles on a five-minute charge to flying vehicles and cars with cutting-edge assisted driving, while armies of live streamers broadcast the specs to viewers across the country and crowds thronged to check out the new tech.
And unlike in decades past, when cars from legacy makers like GM, Volkswagen or BMW were the showpieces, this year it was China’s electric vehicle (EV) vanguard that were the ones to watch.
Case in point: All eyes were on the reveal of a hotly anticipated electric sportscar from BYD, an EV giant that’s also China’s top carmaker. Its new Denza Z is “a testament to pure emotional design” and “extreme performance,” Wolfgang Egger, an ex-Audi and Lamborghini designer who now directs BYD’s design, told a cheering crowd as he whisked off a covering to reveal the bright blue coupe. (“We love you,” some voices shouted back.)
In another hall, crowds waited in a line stretching outside the venue doors to see offerings from Chinese electronics giant turned carmaker Xiaomi. Others craned their necks to catch sight of Nio’s sleek ET9 luxury sedan, a rival to BMW’s 7-series or Porsche’s Panamera, shimmy and shake to the music as it showed off its suspension and automatic doors.
The event is such a spectacle that visitors can be forgiven for forgetting, if for a moment, that the global auto industry is being roiled by President Donald Trump’s tariffs on all cars imported into the United States — and that the US and China are locked in a seemingly intractable trade war that threatens to escalate into a decoupling.
But that’s precisely why the rapid ascent of China’s EV sector is so important to the country, as it squares off against the world’s largest economy and leading innovator.
Once seen as a producer of clumsy knock-offs, Chinese carmakers have catapulted to the forefront of the growing global EV industry — a major coup for a country aiming to transform into a fully fledged tech powerhouse in multiple industries.
Last year, China’s privately owned national champion BYD outsold US EV maker Tesla with its stable of hybrid and electric vehicles. BYD has also overtaken China market stalwart Volkswagen as the top seller of passenger cars domestically. (Tesla, which operates its Gigafactory in Shanghai, did not attend the auto show.)
That’s because Chinese consumers, who no longer see homegrown brands as second-rate, started consistently buying more vehicles from Chinese carmakers than foreign-backed ones in 2023. And, as of last year, the country controls more than 60% of the rapidly growing global EV market, according to energy analytics firm Rho Motion.
While Trump’s trade war looms large over export strategies for global automakers, China’s EV producers are relatively insulated, having already looked to other markets for growth after heavy duties and other curbs were imposed on their vehicles during the Biden administration.
And as Trump pushes to bring back an automobile industry that once symbolized American prosperity, alienating US trade partners and shunning efforts to boost a homegrown EV sector along the way, China’s EV advantage is a potential soft power boon, and a chance to reshape its place in global trade and technology.

Changing ‘so fast’
In China, though, the field is crowded and cutthroat, with competition sparking a fierce, yearslong price war. Domestic automakers are vying to one-up each other on tech and value for money — and fighting to capture market share around the world.
In March, BYD released a battery that takes just five minutes to give its latest models a range of 250 miles. That was already considerably faster than charging Tesla’s batteries and seen as a technological marvel. But just weeks later, on the eve of the auto show, BYD was upstaged by Chinese battery giant CATL, which says it can offer some 320 miles of range in the same time.
On the smart driving side, meanwhile, tech firms like Huawei and Momenta are pushing forward their latest intelligent driving technology after BYD upped the ante earlier this year by pledging to roll out its “God’s Eye” driver-assistance system in most of its models, including those costing around $10,000, at no extra charge.
“The technology is very strong (in China), but the price is not luxurious,” Wang Qiguang, a recent graduate living in Shanghai, observed while checking out BYD’s exhibit last week. “Its formed a kind of technological equality that everyone can enjoy … this is the best part of it.”
Analysts say homegrown intelligent driving technology would have enjoyed an even greater spotlight in Shanghai had the government not tightened rules around the marketing and testing of driver-assistance features following a fatal crash in March involving a Xiaomi sedan.
For Chinese consumers, driving isn’t just about function, it’s also about fun. Carmakers are jostling to win customers by offering kitted-out entertainment systems with multiple screens that pair seamlessly with phones, vibrating massage seats that recline like La-Z-Boys and voice-activated controls for everything – at bargain prices.