Chart: A record two-thirds of car sales in China are now electric vehicles
Two-thirds of new car sales in China being electric is a number I keep coming back to. That share of the world's biggest car market puts the combustion engine in a shrinking corner, and it rewrites a lot of assumptions about how fast this transition can move. China builds cars for itself and also sets the price curve for batteries and the supply chains everyone else depends on.
The success comes from both policy and product. Government subsidies and industrial strategy got the industry moving, but the cars themselves sell on their own merits: they are cheaper to run and increasingly comparable in quality to gasoline models. That kind of practical appeal holds up even when subsidies fade.
I'd want to know how the electricity powering those cars is generated, and whether the charging network is keeping up with the sales surge. A record like this is worth marking, but it's also a reminder that the hard parts aren't always on the showroom floor.