Five years ago, discussing how the EV market would surpass ICE cars before 2030 may be regarded as wildly unrealistic. However, until now, these speculations have evolved from fiction to reality. Aside from environmental issues, the traditional car industry and analysts underestimated humankind’s desire for technology and imagination for innovation. Intelligent EVs have not only redefined auto products as a whole but also reinvented the concept of mobility.

Entering the third decade of the 21st Century, EVs’ immense impact on the global car market has been apparent even with the pandemic. Although the 2021 and 2022’s auto market has a slight rebound compared to the 2020’s market, there’s still much disparity between the height of a few years back. Now entering 2023, economic issues stemming from the chip shortage and multiple conflicts will still prevent the car market from significant growth. Nonetheless, EV sales’ penetration rate will continue to grow and swiftly replace ICE vehicles, entering our daily lives. Within just a few years, EVs will overshadow ICE’s hundred-year glory, signifying the development of EVs not only relies on global governments’ focus on environmentalism and related regulations but also on humanity’s deepest desire to change and evolve. When the time for change arrives, a new set of rules will overhaul the entire traditional auto industry.

Since the 1990s, major international carmakers entered China market to seize the huge business opportunities. After the past 20~30 years, the operation results among carmakers vary in great disparity, and even some carmakers decided to leave the market. Certainly, the competition in the Chinese car market is extremely stiff, especially there are hundreds of carmakers in the competition when entering the era of BEVs and everyone wants to gain a foothold; However, this is also the best arena to test whether international traditional carmakers can be smoothly transformed. Only facing the Chinese market challenges can traditional carmakers solve the problems as soon as possible, and then the experiences can be applied to other battlefields around the world.

When it comes to hybrids, we usually first think of Japanese cars. European and US carmakers have yet to fully commit to developing hybrid techs, especially the devotion to developing diesel cars in the last 2-3 decades crippled their hybrid tech development and subsequent model launches. To some extent, net-zero regulations saved European and US carmakers from their disadvantage to Japanese hybrid techs. On the other hand, Tesla was supposed to lead European and US carmakers in developing BEVs, yet major brands couldn’t let go of their existing ICE profit models. As a result, Chinese self-owned brands took advantage of this situation and put Western carmakers into a dilemma with superior triad (battery, electric control, motor) technology and healthy supply chains. Even though Japanese automakers are slow in electrification, their hybrid and FCEV battery technologies are still on top of their game, allowing them more time to invest in EVs. On the contrary, Western carmakers’ pride and joy, ICE technologies, will eventually become obsolete and bring an uncertain future.

The horse-drawn carriage was the primary mode of transportation for humans prior to the introduction of automobiles in the early 20th century. The coachman was solely responsible for the speed, direction, stability, and safety of the carriage. In other words, all factors involved in the journey would depend on the coachman's mental state, physical strength, reflexes, and even emotions at the moment. Later, the automobile replaced the horse, eliminating the uncertainties of the "driven tool", and the variability of the foregoing factors began to decrease. However, the performance of the manual transmission system heavily depended on the driver's skills, hence the emergence of automatic transmission. The demand for manual transmission is declining day by day, and there are already major carmakers putting forward a discontinuation schedule.

The car market of South America has never been the main sales target of major carmakers; However, there are lots of carmakers that establish manufacturing plants in Mexico to take advantage of geographical proximity to supply the demand of the car market in North America. Now, Chinese self-owned brands began directly entering the core of South America – Brazil to build BEV assembly plants, which shows they are more ambitious than other major traditional carmakers. It’s foreseeable that after 5 years, the car market leader of South America will no longer be the brands from Japan, Germany, or USA.

During the past few decades of auto industry history, Toyota, Mercedes, and BMW were known to be the best at controlling costs and gaining profits. However, Tesla quickly stand out to become the most profitable worldwide this year. Although US automakers aren’t known for their financial prowess, Tesla is a whole different story, for it’s fighting a completely different business war from other brands.