Abstract:
Electric vehicles are reshaping the global political economy by reconfiguring power across energy systems, mineral supply chains, manufacturing, and data infrastructures. China’s dominance in electric mobility exposes deep asymmetries within BRICS and across Asia, while American protectionism is redirecting rather than containing Chinese industrial expansion. The global EV transition thus risks producing a new hierarchy of technological power unless decarbonization is matched by genuine industrial and strategic autonomy.
China occupies a central and structurally dominant position in this landscape. By the mid-2020s, it accounted for around two thirds of global EV and new energy vehicle sales. Its domestic market for new energy vehicles—including battery electric cars, plug-in hybrids, and increasingly, two- and three-wheeled electric transport—exceeded ten million units annually, with some official counts surpassing sixteen million when low-speed urban EVs and commercial micro-mobility vehicles are included. This dominance is not the product of short-term subsidies alone but of a long industrial strategy that fused state planning, market scale, and supply chain control. Battery prices in China have fallen well below most competitors, driven by scale, integration, and state-supported coordination, not simply through innovation but through systemic coordination across mining, processing, cell manufacturing, and vehicle assembly. China dominates processing and downstream manufacturing for key battery minerals, particularly cathodes, anodes, and cell production, giving it leverage that extends far beyond vehicle exports. Even countries that possess critical minerals often remain dependent on Chinese refining before those resources can enter global value chains.
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This matters because electric vehicles are embedded in broader technological systems. Batteries connect vehicles to electricity grids, charging networks, energy storage, and digital platforms. Vehicle software generates data, integrates with urban infrastructure, and increasingly aligns with artificial intelligence–driven logistics and mobility systems. Control over EV ecosystems therefore translates into influence over standards, interoperability, and long-term technological direction. In this sense, China’s EV dominance resembles earlier eras of control over oil refining or semiconductor fabrication, with one crucial difference. It is framed through the language of decarbonization, allowing industrial power to be exercised under the moral authority of climate action.
Within BRICS, electric vehicles expose deep internal asymmetries that challenge the bloc’s claims of a unified green developmental path. India’s trajectory illustrates both momentum and structural constraint. Electrification has advanced rapidly in two- and three-wheelers, which dominate everyday mobility and are highly responsive to cost reductions and state incentives. This has pushed overall EV penetration into high single digits. Yet the deeper layers of the EV economy remain externally dependent. Battery cells, advanced electronics, and many critical materials are imported, leaving India vulnerable to price shocks and geopolitical pressure. Production-linked incentive schemes represent an attempt to convert electrification into domestic industrial capacity, but they face a difficult political economy. Competing with Chinese firms that already operate at global scale requires sustained public investment, policy stability, and tolerance for short-term inefficiencies, all of which are politically contested in a democratic setting.
Brazil presents a different but equally instructive case. With an electricity grid that is more than 80 percent renewable—among the cleanest in the world—Brazil offers one of the most climate-efficient environments for electric mobility. EV adoption has accelerated rapidly, yet it has done so largely through Chinese brands and capital. Manufacturing investments promise jobs and technological upgrading, but they also reproduce familiar patterns of dependency. Key technologies, design decisions, and supply chains remain external, while labor disputes and regulatory interventions in new EV plants underscore unresolved conflicts over localization, working conditions, and control. Brazil’s experience reveals that green industrialization does not automatically redistribute power. Without strong institutions, it risks reproducing peripheral industrial roles under a low-carbon banner.
Russia and South Africa remain marginal players in electric mobility, constrained by fossil fuel–dependent energy systems and legacy industrial structures. In both cases, electrification poses a direct threat to entrenched economic interests tied to hydrocarbons and internal combustion manufacturing. As a result, policy attention often shifts toward alternatives such as hydrogen, not purely for technical reasons but because such pathways allow existing power coalitions to adapt rather than be displaced. In these contexts, the slow pace of EV adoption reflects political resistance as much as technological or infrastructural limitations.
Beyond BRICS, the broader Asian landscape must be understood on its own terms. Asia is not a single EV space but a layered terrain of manufacturing hubs, resource suppliers, and emerging consumer markets. Countries such as Indonesia have sought to leverage nickel reserves through export restrictions and domestic processing mandates, aiming to capture more value from the battery supply chain. Vietnam and Thailand have positioned themselves as manufacturing bases within regional EV networks, attracting investment while navigating dependence on external technology. Japan and South Korea, meanwhile, retain technological depth but face intense pressure from Chinese cost leadership and scale. Across Asia, the EV transition is less about choosing sides than about negotiating position within a fragmented and competitive global system.
The global politics of electric vehicles has sharpened further through the actions of the United States. American tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, batteries, and components are intended to protect domestic industry and slow China’s advance. In practice, they have produced an unintended geopolitical effect. By closing the U.S. market, these measures have pushed Chinese manufacturers to accelerate expansion across Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. Markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, and parts of Europe have seen a surge of competitively priced Chinese EVs precisely because access to the American market has narrowed. Rather than containing China, tariffs have coincided with and accelerated Chinese expansion into other global markets.
This redirection has structural consequences. Chinese firms are not merely exporting vehicles but embedding themselves in local economies through factories, supplier networks, charging infrastructure, and financing arrangements. These investments export standards, technological norms, and data architectures alongside physical products. Many are supported by long-term state-backed finance that allows Chinese firms to absorb short-term losses in pursuit of market dominance. American protectionism may strengthen domestic manufacturing at home, but it simultaneously cedes influence in the very regions where future demand growth will be concentrated. The result is a paradox in which the United States secures its internal market while China deepens its global industrial footprint.
Energy systems further complicate these dynamics. In countries with renewable-heavy electricity grids, electric vehicles offer clear emissions and cost advantages. In coal- or gas-dominated systems, benefits are weaker and social tensions sharper, as public subsidies disproportionately support urban middle classes while broader populations remain energy insecure. This creates political fractures within societies and shapes how EV transitions are perceived, contested, or resisted.
Most credible projections suggest that electric vehicles will account for a plurality or majority of new car sales within the next decade. Under nearly all scenarios, China consolidates its leadership, while countries like India and Brazil expand rapidly but remain constrained unless they succeed in reshaping supply chains and technological control. The risk is that the EV transition produces a new global hierarchy, defined not by oil reserves but by control over minerals, batteries, software, and standards.
At its core, the struggle over electric vehicles is a struggle over the terms of the future. It asks whether decarbonization will democratize industrial power or entrench new forms of technological dominance. For BRICS, the question is whether electrification can become a path toward genuine autonomy rather than managed dependence. For the wider Asian region, it is about positioning within an evolving industrial order. For the United States and Europe, it is about whether protection can coexist with global influence. Electric vehicles promise transformation, but they also expose how deeply politics is embedded in the technologies that claim to carry the world beyond carbon.