Title page
Contents
KEY TAKEAWAYS 1
INTRODUCTION 3
BACKGROUND AND METHODOLOGY 5
IMPORTANCE OF EVS AND EV BATTERIES AND THE U.S. ROLE 5
CHINA'S ELECTRIC VEHICLE INDUSTRY 6
HOW INNOVATIVE ARE CHINA'S EV AND EV BATTERIES INDUSTRIES? 12
Product Innovation 13
EV Battery Innovation 13
EV Innovation 15
Other Vehicle Innovations 18
Process Innovation 18
Market- and Customer-Experience-Driven Innovation 20
INNOVATION INPUTS TO CHINA'S EV SECTOR 21
R&D Intensity 21
Scientific Publications 22
Patents 25
COMPANY CASE STUDIES 28
BYD 28
Li Auto 29
CHINA'S GOVERNMENT POLICIES SUPPORTING THE EV SECTOR 30
Subsidies 30
JVs and Technology Transfer Requirements 32
IP Theft 32
Favoring Domestic Enterprises 33
Other Policies 33
Analysis of Chinese Policies Supporting the EV Sector 34
WHAT SHOULD AMERICA DO? 35
CONCLUSION 38
ENDNOTES 39
Table 1. Leading automotive R&D investors in the 2023 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard 21
Figure 1. EV sales by country and EVs as a share of all car sales 7
Figure 2. Global EV sales in millions of units 7
Figure 3. Global market shares of top 10 BEV manufacturers, year-end 2023 8
Figure 4. Global market shares of top 10 PHEV manufacturers, year-end 2023 9
Figure 5. Top 10 manufacturers' NEV retail sales in China, 2023 9
Figure 6. Leading EV battery manufacturers' global market shares, 2023 10
Figure 7. Global shares of value added in the motor vehicles, trailers, and semi-trailers industry 11
Figure 8. Exports, by value, of top five EV-exporting nations ($ billions) 12
Figure 9. New and updated EV releases in China, 2017-2023 19
Figure 10. Number of automotive engineering publications in top 10 percent of most-cited publications 22
Figure 11. Number of EV scientific publications in China (per trillion $ GDP) 23
Figure 12. Top five countries for high-impact publications about electric batteries in the ASPI Critical Technology Tracker dataset 24
Figure 13. H-Index for scientific publications in electric batteries, 2023 25
Figure 14. Number of PCT patent publications in motor vehicles (B62D) 25
Figure 15. Global shares of PCT patent publications in motor vehicles (B62D) 26
Figure 16. Number of PCT patent publications in electric propulsion technology (B60L) 27
Figure 17. Global shares of PCT patent publications in electric propulsion technology (B60L) 27