What Hefei, China’s EV City, Says About the State of the Economy

Ultramodern factories churn out electric cars and solar panels in Hefei, an industrial center in the heart of central China. Broad avenues link office towers and landscaped parks. Subway lines open at a brisk pace. Yet at Hefei’s market for construction materials, which fills 10 city blocks, local merchants are gloomy. Wu Junlin, a vendor of doors, has closed two of his three stores and laid off all but one of his dozen employees. “I have been doing this for 20 years — after all these years, this year is…

Why Volkswagen Is Hiring 3,000 Engineers in China

A bright orange robot, 10 feet tall, looms over Volkswagen’s new electric car assembly line in central China. It was imported from Germany. The factory’s other 1,074 robots were made in Shanghai. Volkswagen used to import shock absorbers from Central Europe for cars it makes at Chinese factories. Now it buys them from a company in China for 40 percent less. After relying for decades on engineers in Germany to design cars for the Chinese market, Volkswagen has begun hiring for a team of nearly 3,000 Chinese engineers, which will…

China’s Electric Car Factories Are Facing a Worker Shortage

Xing Wei graduated from a vocational high school in northeastern China in 2003 and went to work as an electrician in an auto parts factory in the country’s south. The only set of wheels he could afford was a black, three-speed bicycle. He earned $1,150 a year and shared a sweltering dormitory room with three other workers. “There was air-conditioning, but because we had to pay the electricity ourselves, we basically didn’t turn it on,” Mr. Xing said. Two decades later, Mr. Xing, 42, makes close to $60,000 a year.…

Nio Loses $35,000 a Car. That Should Scare the U.S. and Europe.

Nio, a Chinese electric car company that competes with Tesla, employs 11,000 people in research and development, but sells a mere 8,000 cars per month. It has invested so extensively in robots that one of its factories employs just 30 technicians to make 300,000 electric car motors a year. Nio offers $350 augmented reality glasses for each seat in its cars, and has introduced a cellphone that interacts with the car’s self-driving system. And none of it is profitable — far from it. Nio lost $835 million from April through…

Price War Over Electric Cars Erupts in China

A cutthroat price war has erupted in the world’s largest automobile market. Within the span of a week in March, Volkswagen’s Chinese joint venture slashed prices on its ID.3 electric cars by 18 percent. Changan Automobile, one of China’s state-owned car manufacturers, offered $3,000 cash rebates, free charging credits and other incentives for its electric vehicles. BYD, the country’s biggest E.V. maker, unveiled a second round of markdowns in a month for some of its older models. Amid slumping auto sales, car brands are going to extremes to stay competitive,…

Why China’s Economy Faces a Perilous Road to Recovery

Many European manufacturers in China have been forced to operate with about half their usual staff for two to three weeks, affecting output somewhat, said Klaus Zenkel, the chairman of the chamber’s South China chapter. As a precaution against lockdowns, many companies had accumulated spare parts in warehouses before the Covid wave and have relied on those to keep running. But to save on costs, a few small suppliers of specific components have stopped operations early for the Lunar New Year holiday, which starts on Jan. 21. “Everyone managed a…

For China’s Auto Market, Electric Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present.

Zhang Youping, a Chinese retiree, purchased an all-electric, small sport-utility vehicle from BYD — China’s largest electric vehicle maker — at an auto show for around $20,000 last month. Her family has bought three gas-powered cars in the last decade, but she recently grew concerned about gas prices and decided to go electric “to save money.” A few months earlier, her son had also bought an E.V. It was a $10,000 hatchback from Leapmotor, another Chinese manufacturer. This year, a quarter of all new cars purchased in China will be…

China’s Popular Electric Vehicles Have Put Europe’s Automakers on Notice

FRANKFURT — The name MG used to be synonymous with spirited but finicky sports cars from Britain. Nowadays the iconic octagonal badge serves a different kind of motoring ambition: China’s push to become a big player in the global auto market. SAIC Motor, one of China’s Big Four automakers, bought the MG brand in 2007 and is stamping it on a line of electric sport utility vehicles on sale in Germany and other European markets. MG is an example of how Chinese carmakers are exploiting the shift to electric cars…