The success of electric cars in the Communist country has partly been attributed to plans put in place by the Government more than a decade ago to dominate all aspects of the technology’s supply chain, as well as state subsidies.
China’s rise in the EV market has rattled more traditional rivals in America and Europe, with major manufacturers such as Volkswagen, Renault, General Motors and Ford now scrambling to catch up.
Mr Farley pointed to this, as well as the sheer size of the Chinese market, as reasons for why China now “dominated” EV production.
“Companies like BYD, they were very small when they started their journey,” he told the podcast.
“They’re now much bigger than Tesla – they’re the biggest in the world … And you know, they have [intellectual property] that the rest of the world has not developed. It’s not the old days, where someone would copy a Western technology – the opposite is true.
“That happened a decade ago and now everyone’s seeing it on the street in front of their house. But it didn’t happen overnight. The market was big enough for the last six or seven years, where none of those companies needed to export.
“And then it wasn’t big enough and then everyone started to notice.”