Bookmark my comment for five years from now, see if I'm wrong. China has shown they can scale, the rest of the world has not.
Chinese carmakers now sell one EV abroad for every two at home - https://restofworld.org/2026/china-ev-exports-overcapacity-g... - August 18th, 2026
- Some 540,000 EVs left China in July, a monthly record, while about 980,000 were sold at home, according to a report from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a London-based research firm. That worked out to one EV exported for every two sold domestically, compared with one for every five last July.
- The move abroad is permanent rather than a response to one bad year, and the price war that has played out inside China for two years is following the cars overseas, Lei Xing, founder of Chinese auto industry consultancy AutoXing, told Rest of World. Chinese cars are inexpensive, widely available, and carry the technology buyers want, much like Japanese and German cars did when those countries built their own export industries, he said.
- EV sales outside China, Europe, and North America almost doubled to 1.7 million units in the first seven months of this year, and Chinese brands supplied half of them, up from a quarter in 2023, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
- “The expectation is that significantly more EVs will be sold in the rest-of-world region this year than in North America,” George Whitcombe, senior EV analyst at Benchmark, told Rest of World.
VW is laying 100k workers off, for example.
Volkswagen to cut further 50,000 jobs as it ends row with union over revival plan - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/sep/03/volkswagen-... - September 4th, 2026
BMW 8000.
BMW to cut ‘as many as 8,000 jobs’ under pressure from Chinese rivals - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jul/29/bmw-cut-job... - July 29th, 2026
I don't care who profits, profit doesn't matter, I care about units moved. Who cares what Americans want? It is a shrinking market. You can safely ignore it as an EV exporter. The opportunity is the rest of the world. The US is currently less than 19% of the global light vehicle market, and will continue to shrink over time as India and Africa grows.
A ‘perfect storm’ points to a much smaller U.S. auto market by 2040 - https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/28/us-auto-market.html - June 28th, 2026
- Ten years ago, a record 17.6 million cars, trucks and SUVs were sold in the U.S. Some forecasts say the country might not come close to that number again.
- Analysts at consulting firm Bain & Company said several signs indicate the market is about to shrink even more. Falling birth rates, behavioral changes, high car prices and a growing array of alternatives could drive sales down by more than 2 million units by 2040, according to their analysis.
- These indications point to a future where automakers fiercely compete for a shrinking number of customers, said Mark Gottfredson, a partner at Bain & Company.