The recent surge in fuel prices due to the war in Iran has spurred demand for electric vehicles around the world, and Chinese car makers are making the most of the opportunity.
The recent surge in fuel prices due to the war in Iran has spurred demand for electric vehicles around the world, and Chinese car makers are making the most of the opportunity.
A huge domestic market is a strong advantage for Chinese manufacturers.
Even if every single country stops buying Chinese cars, they’ll still have a base of 1.5 billion potential customers.
With more countries actively partnering with China, this number goes up considerably.
Tho, maybe it’s because the Chinese don’t deal with these huge margins they have on cars now. A new car now costs tenfold what a new car would cost a few decades ago
Average car price 20 years ago in Canada, $32,700. That $52,000 corrected to inflation.
Average price of new car in Canada 2026 is $63000, but average is a stupid measure, the median is much lower.
I can’t find the actual median price but it is estimated by one site at $45K.
The big difference between today and a few decades ago is people leasing cars they cannot afford, which drives up prices.
Not entirely disagreeing with you. The way you worded it was always going to be the case if all you do is compare window sticker prices from across the decades though. Inflation cuts your money in half roughly every 20 years. A 20K car in 2006 is a ~40k car today even if everything else stayed equal. The average price for cars after inflation is going up though. The US’s trend towards SUVs and trucks is certainly pulling prices up but other things do as well like the government mandated features(small relatively but not nothing).
Some examples(these are when they became mandatory, not available)
Are you sure on the TPMS date? I’ve got a vehicle that’s much newer than 2007 that doesn’t have it
For the US it’s September 2007, for the EU it started November 2012 but seems like a phased rollout until 2014. Don’t really follow EU regs.
Canada, and still not mandatory here apparently. Which is weird because a lot of our automotive requirements do tend to follow the US due to common production lines and other such factors
They sell a lot of EVs because of laws. China did not make EVs voluntary in large cities.
Indeed, environmental regulations have played a pivotal role in the development of Chinese EV market, no doubt here.
In some cities, ICE cars are borderline unusable since you can’t even drive them at will any day you want - assuming you can even get a license plate in the first place.
What I meant was that international pressure on the demand side is not as scary for Chinese companies as it is for many other places.
This is the reality of the situation. They are an absolute juggernaut with a tremendous amount of inertia. It seems like it would be a good long term strategy to partner with them, or emulate them at least.