European carmakers spent decades transferring their technology to China in exchange for market access. Now they're using Chinese factories to build their own cars cheaper and ship them back home. VW says it can produce an EV in China for half what it costs anywhere else. Nissan is targeting 300,000 exports from China by 2030. A Chinese-made Chery became the best-selling new car in the UK in March. China can produce up to 50 million cars a year but only sold 24 million domestically last year, so factories are desperate for volume. Chinese car exports have gone from under 1 million in 2020 to over 7 million last year. Meanwhile, some European factories are running below 50% capacity. At some point "competing with China" became "manufacturing in China." Nobody's quite sure when that happened. Source: Financial Times - @MarioNawfal
