What oil crisis? China’s EVs are ready to dominate the 21st century

A sleek SUV offers mechanical foot massages, a luxury minivan has rotating seats to help passengers hop into its third row – and a surprising proportion of models offer in-car karaoke with professional-grade speakers. Others have headlights that can project movies onto a wall to make anywhere a drive-in cinema. Here, intelligent driving features are ubiquitous, even in affordable models.

To many consumers peering in from the outside, the options in China – on display in Beijing this week at the world’s largest auto show – seem like a dream. But to some automakers and politicians around the world, they’re an existential threat.

Chinese carmakers are cranking out their offerings at a large scale and a comparatively low price. And there’s another major sell: while oil and gas costs skyrocket due to the Iran war, the vast majority of these cars are electric or hybrid.

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