Cars in China are next level 🚙🇨🇳📈
This video examines the rapid rise and features of electric vehicles in China, highlighting quiet urban streets and luxurious interior options such as zero-gravity seats and ceiling screens. It details how tech companies like Xiaomi and Huawei entered auto manufacturing, the scale of autonomous driving and robotaxi fleets, and extensive charging and battery swap infrastructure. Finally, it addresses the challenges European car brands face against affordable, tech-focused domestic models.
Watch on AgentCDNChapters
Quiet streets and electric adoption
The presenter highlights how electric vehicles and scooters have transformed city streets in China, making urban environments exceptionally quiet.
Next-level passenger luxury
Chinese electric vehicles offer luxury features like zero-gravity reclining seats, massage options, and ceiling multimedia displays that rival Western luxury cars.
Tech giants entering car manufacturing
Technology companies like Xiaomi and Huawei have rapidly integrated vertically to manufacture their own electric vehicles with advanced sensor hardware.
Advanced driver assistance and full self-driving
Autonomous driving features come included without subscription fees, while robotaxi fleets from Pony.ai, WeRide, and Baidu scale up across major cities.
Battery swapping and charging infrastructure
China leads EV infrastructure with thousands of battery swap stations and an extensive network of fast chargers across metropolitan areas.
Foreign brands and the Chinese EV market
European carmakers struggle as younger buyers prioritize technology and value, prompting foreign brands to partner locally and adapt.
Transcript
The first thing that you notice when you're visiting big cities in China is how quiet the streets are. Most of the cars sold in 2025 and 2026 are all electric, in addition to the scooters on the street being 100% electric as well. That doesn't just change the sustainability and energy use, but it also changes how the streets sound. So peaceful. Second, there's a category of cars that are built for passengers at the level that we haven't seen anywhere in Europe or US.
You can literally just lay down, put it in a bed mode, drop a TV screen from the top, turn on the massage function. Quite comfortable ride in this zero-G chair that you haven't seen anywhere in like S-Class Mercedes or 7 Series BMW. This is completely next level. My favorites were the Zeekr 009 and the Stello S9 by Huawei. Third is that the car companies are acting like technology companies. Literally 2 or 3 years ago, Xiaomi and Huawei were making mostly just smartphones.
And now they're making cars. These are vertically integrated companies. They literally make their own batteries, hardware, software, services, all controlled by the same company. Xiaomi started making cars 3 years ago, and I was able to visit their hyperfactory where literally metal goes in one end and the other end ready-made cars come out, 70 seconds every car. These cars come with LiDAR, radar, and 15 different cameras and are waiting for approval to be used on Chinese roads.
I got a demo from Xiaomi, Huawei, and XPeng, and especially XPeng and Huawei were already at the level that felt similar to Tesla Full Self-Driving in America. Oh, and you don't have to pay extra for full self-driving here. No monthly fees. Fourth, let's talk about full self-driving. There's 3 companies on the road with 2,000 to 3,000 self-driving cars at the moment, similar to the scale of Waymo. I tried Pony Ride's 7th generation vehicles in Shenzhen and Beijing. It's a similar experience to Waymo. They all have very similar ride quality and are still limited to only certain areas in large cities.
In addition to Pony, there's also WeRide pioneering buses in 30 cities and Apollo by Baidu's 6th generation vehicles that are available for you to try on the roads. Fifth is infrastructure. NIO has almost 4,000 battery swap stations all around the country, and it takes 3 to 5 minutes to exchange to a full battery. This has been the case for scooters for a long time already. In addition, having a fast charger network, there's more than 20 within 1 kilometer radius almost anywhere in the city. So with all of that, you may ask, where are all the EU car manufacturers?
They're still here, but they're considered more like a brand and prestige play. They're not considered good cars, at least based on the youth who values technology and smart features. In addition to the average electric cars being almost 2 times cheaper in China than in the US or Europe, a good example of that is Audi, who launched a partnership with SAIC to make a completely new brand, Audi in all caps, not with the 4 rings that we're used to, to make fully smart electric cars for the Chinese market. Overall, I was quite impressed by the adoption of EVs, the quality of the experience, and how close they are in full self-driving to the Western leaders like Tesla.