What is the future of cars? For one thing, after substantial government support and poaching of top Western talent, China’s car industry is about to dominate globally with charging rates, ranges, luxury design, technology, and sheer volumes. Moreover, it’s no longer content with serving its own enormous market as Chinese brands make serious inroads across Australia and Europe.

In May, it was reported that, for the first time, Chinese automaker BYD sold more cars in Europe than Tesla in the previous month. Meanwhile in the US, the affordable car is about to go extinct. With President Donald Trump’s back-and-forth tariffs, it may well be time to say goodbye to the sub-$30,000 car.

WIRED senior editor and auto obsessive Jeremy White hosted a Reddit AMA earlier this month to directly answer your questions about the future of cars and EVs as the global market dramatically shifts. Here’s what you need to know.

Questions and responses have been edited for clarity.

Musk’s horrific journey into politics aside, do you think Tesla has a future, with pressure from BYD and its failure to develop a cheaper model, among other challenges?

Yes, I do think Tesla has a future—it was only last year that they lost the top slot of the biggest-selling car in the world (to Toyota). So let’s keep in mind that Tesla still sells a lot of cars. That said, Tesla has an aging fleet, it has a CEO with his attention diverted very much elsewhere, and, most of all, right now it has a brand and reputation problem. Musk’s DOGE antics have directly hit the company—even their finance chief Vaibhav Taneja was forced to admit so on its April earnings call, saying “unwarranted hostility towards our brand and our people had an impact in certain markets.”

And the Cybertruck has been an unmitigated disaster.

Tesla desperately needs a win. It needs a new cheap electric car, and no amount of dressing up the Model Y in new clothes is going to cut it. It also needs to look at its autonomous tech, because Chinese brands all favoring Lidar are beating it there too.

Let’s face it, the Chinese brands have learned a great deal from Tesla and are now coming for Elon’s lunch—and, right now, Tesla is not really in a position to compete. How long can this go on? How long can the board put up with these dismal sales figures? We shall see. But one thing is for sure: it cannot carry on like this.

Will China really be able to make inroads into the European market given the combination of tariffs and European consumer preference for their own homegrown brands?

Yes, and they already are. Chinese automaker BYD now outsells Tesla in Europe, and it is now launching its premium brand, Denza, there too—think Audi or BMW level. Xpeng is there, too, as is Nio.

There’s also MG and Omoda, and don’t forget the Geely-owned brands like Volvo and Polestar, too. More are on their way of course, but the consumer preference has not seen people turning away from China EVs so far, it seems. If anything, buyers have been attracted by the value and the specs of Chinese cars, making the EU-own offerings look like poor value. This has happened in Australia, too.

What do you think about the expansion of EV infrastructure in countries like the US or in the EU? Will Chinese EVs be viable as a realistic option for the majority of the landmass?

Well, the charging infrastructure in the US and EU needs to be much better than it is. Remember, it was the ubiquity of the Ford Model T that played a pivotal role in the development of the gas station network, and we need that same trick to be turned for the EV age.

At the end of 2024, over 75 percent of the European highway network had chargers that were at most 50 km apart, whereas only just over a third of the US interstate highways achieved this. There’s so much work to be done here, and the scale gap is absolutely enormous: the US will supposedly need 28 million EV charging ports by 2030 to support 33 million EVs. Meanwhile, Europe needs 8.8 million chargers by 2030—and to put that in perspective, that would require more than 23,000 installs per week in that region.

What will be the difference between the modern Chinese version of the export-to-the-world-market versus how the Japanese did it?

The key difference is Japanese expansion took 30-plus years, while China is trying to do it in under a decade. Japan also arguably started with economy cars and moved up, while China is trying to compete across all segments, from budget (see Xiaomi’s new answer to the Model Y) to luxury (see BYD’s Yang Wang!).

The tech approach is different, too. Japan perfected existing internal combustion engine technology, as well as production of course; China is betting on next-gen platforms.

China’s speed-over-patience approach seems to be working, apart from in one key area: as Japan took much longer to build its industry, it had much longer to develop lasting brand loyalty and premium positioning. Chinese auto brands are going too fast to do that right now, I’d say.

How are the Japanese and Korean automakers reacting to China? Is it any different given their proximity? Or is it mostly the same as most Western manufacturers?

One could say their reaction has been more desperate and aggressive, maybe because of their proximity and the threat they face. Honda and Nissan’s $58 billion merger that was floated, then called off, is a good example. Hyundai has cut its long-term vehicle sales targets as it gears up for aggressive marketing by Chinese rivals. But, ultimately, they face the same problem of the rise of China EV companies as North American and European carmakers do.

The US auto sector has increasingly relied on a heavily integrated supply chain between Canada and Mexico, which Trump’s tariff regime has thrown into chaos. Does a disunited North American auto sector have any real hope of mounting a challenge to Chinese auto makers? Or do you anticipate they will shrink in relevance until they’re only servicing an insulated US market?

We’ve covered the tariff disruption loads on WIRED, and the hit is clearly significant. Some estimate car prices will increase by as much as nearly $5,000.

The Chinese challenge isn’t primarily about supply-chain efficiency though—it’s about tech, pricing, and what buyers think of China’s cars. BYD now has nearly one third of China’s EV market compared to Tesla’s 6 percent, and now Chinese brands are coming for global markets (take a look at Europe and Australia) with pricing that Tesla just can’t match unless it has another Model 3 moment. And the Model Y refresh hasn’t worked.

But it’s not all bad news. If American automakers ramp up development on their EV tech, like GM and Ford are trying to do right now, reduced battery costs will happen for sure and they can compete. Leveraging US strengths in trucks, luxury, and long-established brands will be key, too.

Basically it all comes down to whether American automakers can innovate fast enough. The tariffs may actually slow that innovation by increasing costs and complexity.

So what exactly can we expect coming on the market?

Loads of new EVs with better batteries that can go even further than you can wish for. Lucid’s Air Grand Touring just set a Guinness World Record for the longest EV drive, powering along for 749 miles on a single charge. Astonishing. And we’re still in Model T Ford country really with battery tech, if we’re being honest. This is why residual value of EVs is so bad—the tech keeps getting better so quickly that cars like the Porsche Taycan plummet in value after just a year because better incoming tech is making these models look old at a frightening pace.

(From an Italy-based EV owner.) One of the challenges that I see being hard to overcome is the distribution. With a fuel car you will easily find a gas station, drop there, refuel and pay. Is anything going on related to converting fuel gas stations into EV charge stations? Are any of the new Chinese brands addressing this, like Tesla did with Superchargers but on a bigger scale?

I hear you. Dealing with charging point apps is horrendous and would make anyone think twice about getting a full EV as opposed to a hybrid. Legislation is needed to make these companies play nice with each other, and not just in one country but globally—but you can imagine just how tough that is going to be.

I remember a BMW executive telling me that converting a gas station into a charging station was a huge operation. If I remember correctly, it basically requires turning it into a substation, which costs millions. So that might explain the slow conversion we are seeing.

Apparently, last year the US had nearly 9,000 public fast-charging stations, or about one fast-charging station for every 15 gas stations. So we need loads more, but also need them far more widely distributed.

As for what China is doing, well, it’s being smarter. BYD supposedly wants to build more than 4,000 new ultra-fast charging stations across China, with flash-chargers that can provide a full charge in just 5 to 8 minutes. Zeekr and Huawei are announcing 1.2-megawatt and 1.5-megawatt chargers.

Basically, Chinese brands are attempting to leapfrog the entire existing infrastructure with ultra-fast charging networks that make the Tesla Supercharger look slow. This could be a much bigger change than retrofitting gas stations.

In Europe, there’s a company called Dacia that’s managed to gain a lot of market share by producing cars that are consistently the cheapest in the market, and it does that by using trailing-edge hardware (a lot of it older Renault parts). I’m curious, why isn’t there something similar in the US?

I can’t say too much here as we’re working on a piece right now on this very subject—so keep an eye on WIREDs Gear channel where we put all our auto coverage.

Dacia is an interesting example as they have managed to be cheap through a couple of ways: First, the brand offers few to no options, the cars basically come as you find them, and they are not top spec by any means (but they are well-designed). The new design duo they have there are excellent. Second, Dacia also produce some of their cars in China to keep costs down, like the ridiculously cheap Spring, which I tested out and was mighty impressed by. It costs just $19,000 new.

The US needs to get much more into this budget EV space, and that’s what Jeff Bezos is trying to do with Slate, of course.