A two-hour drive beyond the traffic jams of São Paulo, past the vast valleys of sugar cane, one of the first Chinese battery-powered-car factories in the Americas is getting ready to open.
Its goal is to reinvent the way Brazil drives, and ultimately, the rest of Latin America, much as Chinese automakers have already done across much of Asia and want to do in Europe.
Until recently, this factory was run by Mercedes-Benz, the German giant of 20th century automotive innovation that churned out cars powered by gasoline. Today, it’s owned by Great Wall Motor, a company that decades ago made rugged pickup trucks for the Chinese countryside but is now one of China’s leading exporters of stylish, affordable electric cars.
The change in hands reflects a profound disruption for one of the world’s most vital industries. If American and European gas-guzzling cars once dominated global tastes and trends, that era appears to be fast turning to China’s favor.
Today, not only does China make and export more cars of all types than any other country in the world, Chinese firms dominate the global manufacture of battery-powered vehicles of the future. They also control the supply chain for virtually everything that goes into those cars.