Elon Musk Warns That Chinese Automakers Will “Demolish” Western Rivals Unless Trade Barriers Are Established

–>

Elon Musk and Tesla have achieved remarkable success in the last few years, putting legacy automakers on the backfoot and an EV at the top of Europe’s best-seller list for the first time ever. But even Tesla’s bullish CEO didn’t mince words when describing the threat posed by Chinese EV brands this week.

On an earnings call this Wednesday Musk warned that China’s automakers will “demolish” their global opposition unless other nations impose trade barriers to handicap the new wave of electric cars coming from the Far East.

“If there are no trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world,” Reuters reports Musk telling analysts. “They’re extremely good,” he said of the Chinese industry whose chances of world domination he derided back in 2011.

Related: BYD Overtakes VW Group As China’s Best-Selling Car Brand

The Tesla boss’s frank warning comes shortly after BYD slipped by the American company to become the world’s top-selling EV firm in the final quarter of 2023. Though Tesla aggressively cut prices throughout the year, chasing volume at the expense of profit, and managed to beat Dacia’s budget Sandero to the top of the European sales charts, it couldn’t keep BYD at bay. China also overtook Japan as the world’s biggest exporter of cars during 2023 and seems sure to repeat that success during 2024 as it starts to expand its sales activities into Europe.

Musk isn’t alone among Western car bosses in being concerned about the Chinese threat, but he does at least have a couple of irons in the fire. Earlier this week we reported that Tesla would start production in 2025 of a new baby crossover currently codenamed Redwood. The entry-level model makes use of a new platform that will slash the production costs of a Tesla EV, allowing Tesla to bring it to market for less than $30,000. The first cars will be built at Tesla’s Texas plant in the second half of 2025, but production will likely be rolled out to the firm’s other factories outside of the U.S. the following year.