How China Revolutionized the EV Industry

By Kevin Lu (10/07/25) — Shanghai, CN

When my plane touched down in Shanghai this semester, I thought I knew what to expect: headlines about China’s electric-vehicle (EV) boom, viral “EV graveyards,” the rise of BYD, Tesla’s price wars. I imagined a few battery taxis or a sleek NIO on the Bund.

Instead, I entered a city that felt almost post-gasoline.

Three things stood out immediately: how many EVs there were, how few of them were BYDs, and how many were Teslas. Nearly every car had a green license plate, its quiet motor humming beneath a futuristic dashboard. Coming from New York, where EV adoption still feels niche, Shanghai looked like a glimpse of the next decade.

Caption: My first day of school was in an EV. So was every time I ever rideshared (DiDi’ed) in Shanghai.

A Taxi Driver’s Lesson in Policy

On my first night, I asked my DiDi driver in halting Chinese why everyone drove an EV. He shrugged: “Cheaper. The government gives subsidies.”

That single word — “cheaper” — reflects years of policy engineering. Gasoline cars in Shanghai require auctioned license plates that cost ¥90,000-100,000 RMB ($12,000-14,000). EVs get a green plate for free, effectively cutting the price of a compact car. Buyers also enjoy purchase-tax exemptions worth up to ¥10,000-13,000 RMB ($1,300-1,800).

Shanghai paired incentives with infrastructure: by 2024, it had over 500,000 charging piles (Zhang, 2025). Driving electric wasn’t a lifestyle choice; it was simply rational.

From Policy to Pavement: The Charging Revolution

Western EV imagery often shows a lone Tesla tethered to a charger for 30-40 minutes. Shanghai has flipped that stereotype.

On a road trip from the Great Wall, my DiDi driver pulled into what looked like a regular gas station. Without leaving his seat, a robotic arm swapped the battery in under three minutes. Newer stations reportedly do it in under a minute.

Battery-swapping, pioneered by NIO Power and Aulton and backed by national “swap-ready” standards, makes refueling as fast as, sometimes faster than, pumping gas. By building infrastructure before flooding the market, Shanghai avoided the notorious 2019-2020 EV graveyards, when micro-EVs lost value after sudden subsidy cuts.

Caption: I watched a taxi roll into a battery-swap station, and within minutes, it had a fresh battery without the driver even getting out.

Tesla’s Surprising Stronghold

BYD leads China’s EV market with about 30% share, but on Shanghai’s streets, I counted nearly as many Teslas, roughly a 4:3 ratio. A marketing executive explained that affluent, globally minded Shanghai consumers value Tesla’s minimalist design and prestige, while smaller cities favor BYD’s affordability.

Tesla’s arrival has also spurred domestic innovation. Its Shanghai Gigafactory, opened in 2019, set new benchmarks for range, software, and sleek design, pushing BYD, XPeng, and NIO to improve technology and cut prices. This rivalry has made China’s EV market among the most competitive and innovative in the world.

The Sustainability Paradox

Cleaner air and quieter streets are clear public-health wins, but electrifying tailpipes isn’t the same as decarbonizing transport. According to a McKinsey report, roughly 60% of China’s grid is still coal-powered, and much of the electricity used to charge Shanghai’s EVs comes from fossil fuels. Producing each kilowatt-hour of lithium-ion battery capacity emits 60-100 kg of CO₂ before the car even hits the road, and mining lithium, cobalt, and nickel strains water and ecosystems.

Battery recycling is the next frontier: China now requires automakers to reclaim used packs, but a closed-loop system is still developing. Unless these gaps are closed, the EV revolution risks shifting emissions and waste rather than erasing them.

Shanghai has shown how policy and infrastructure can electrify a metropolis almost overnight. The real test now is whether it can turn that electric future into a truly low-carbon one, offering the world not just a model for fast EV adoption, but for making it genuinely sustainable.

References

“BYD Sales by Model and Country Statistics (Feb 2025).” Tridens Technology. Available at TridensTechnology.com.

Zhang, Cong, Jingchao Lian, Haitao Min & Ming Li. “Shanghai as a Model: Research on the Journey of Transportation Electrification and Charging Infrastructure Development.” Sustainability, vol. 17, no. 1, 2025, Article 91. MDPI.

“Overview on Battery Swapping and Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) in China.” Changing-Transport.org, 2022.

“The Race to Decarbonize Electric-Vehicle Batteries.” McKinsey & Company.