I do hope Motability will take the moral high ground in Chinese built cars, every manufacturer is owned by the Chinese government and the premier has given his support to Putin and his genocidslmwsr on Ukraine. I won’t give any money where I can choose to a supporter of Putin im sure others have their own views and some don’t care about Ukraine, so be it we all have our own views.
I’m with you on Ukraine but, the problem is Europe and other western gvernments and manufacturers have intwined them self with China, allowing them to become far more technologically advanced. In our case thats EV’s, which the Chinese hava mastered solid state technolgy along with European car manufacturers involvment with their counterparts in China.
BMW’s partnership with Great Wall with the Mini EV production switched from Cowley to China. Great Walls’s Ora Funky cat is basically a Mini with a different skin.
Geely owned Volvo after purchasing Volvo from ford and Renaults joint venture with Geely and Aramco. Geely has a majority share in Lotus.
Renaults Dacia joint venture with Lada Ru., with some Europe models made in China to make EV’s namely the Dacia Spring. Then theres the PSA-Dongfeng group.
BYD joint venture to make and supply Londons electric Enviro buses. Their Atto 3 is likely to join the scheme.
Catl and BYD are the largest BEV battery makers and are both powers in manufacturing batteries for European cars, for example some BMW’s, Polestar and Tesla and so on. BYD’s Blade battery for instance doesn’t smoke or fire and is said to be the safest battery up to date. LG Chem fire risks have seen manufacturers look elsewhere for its battery’s. Northvolt although not Chinese now manufacture some of the batteries for Volvo’s recharge vehicles.
How does the west namely Europe untangle itself? , the fact EU’s push for BEV’s, along with the EU powers agreement with China to allow its BEV’s to be sold to meet their zero pledge as European manufacturers are slow to uptake the rechnology and aren’t as advanced as their Chinese counterparts with battery technology, and also bring BEV’s to the mass market at an affordable price. Although Germany, Italy etc are now digging their feet in regarding the ban on the sale of combustion engine cars.
My thoughts are the west only have themselvesto blame.