The US Hasn’t Noticed That China-Made Cars Are Taking Over the World
The country is poised to become the No. 2 exporter of passenger vehicles, surpassing the US and South Korea and risking new tensions with trading partners and rivals.
Illustration: Timo Lenzen for Bloomberg Businessweek
When Andreas Tatt, a manager at a greeting card company in Canterbury, UK, was interested in buying a new car, he knew he’d go electric. But after considering a Tesla Model 3 and the Porsche Taycan, he settled on a less familiar choice: a yellow-gold, battery-powered Polestar 2 manufactured by Volvo and its Chinese parent Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co.
“It turns a lot of heads, partly due to its color, partly due to people not knowing what it is,” says Tatt, who waited four months for the vehicle to be shipped from Luqiao in eastern China. “I did have some concerns that the build quality may not be the best,” he says. “Upon test driving, any doubt of quality issues was put to rest.”