‘The WIRED’: Auto Shanghai 2025 wasn’t just a Car Show – it was a warning to the West

After poaching some of the best Western auto talent, China’s car industry is about to dominate globally with charging rates, ranges, luxury design, technology, and sheer volumes, writes ‘The WIRED’, which ‘illuminates how technology and innovations are changing every aspect of our lives.’

The Chinese car industry has latest opportunity to scare the living daylights out of Europe and the US came at the Auto Shanghai motor show. Held at the world’s second-largest exhibition space, the show saw more than 1,400 cars from 26 countries spread across 13 halls. Some 93 vehicles made their world debut in front of 1 million attendees.

To Western eyes, photos of Auto Shanghai are akin to asking ChatGPT to recreate the glory days of motor shows past. Anyone who strolled the cavernous convention halls of Paris, Frankfurt, Geneva, Detroit, even Birmingham, and gawped at the new and the exciting will recognize the scene. There’s lots of shiny metal and carbon, formed into cars of every conceivable size, shape and social status. But the badges are unfamiliar, model names nonsensical; prices implausibly low, performance claims from another planet.

Names like Jetour, Denza, iCar, Changan, Hongqi and Luxeed won’t ring many bells. Keep walking and you’ll catch a reassuring glimpse of Audi, Lotus, Buick, and Volkswagen, but the spark of familiarity they bring is quickly extinguished by a stark realization: They are no longer in Shanghai to show the fledgling locals how it’s done, as beacons of a Western industry riding high on a century of success. They’re surrounded by younger, fitter, and keener rivals with a hunger to put a ding in the universe. And there’s about to be a feeding frenzy.

Highlights of this year’s Shanghai show included the Jetour G900, a range-extended electric SUV with two rear-mounted turbines for use as a boat; an electric Porsche 911 rival from BYD-owned Denza; the award-winning Xpeng M03 Mona; and the Maextro S800, a Maybach-rivaling luxury sedan from Huawei.

Yes, that Huawei. The telecom company oversees the Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance (HIMA), which includes car brands like AITO, Stelato, and SAIC, itself another auto group that includes Roewe, Rising Auto, Wuling, and former British sports car maker MG, among others.

Such fever dreams won't give Western brands sleepless nights, but the EV technology coming out of China in 2025 certainly will. BYD used the Shanghai show to reveal a charging system powerful enough to deliver 259 miles of range in five minutes, at a peak speed of 1,000 kW — 10 times the charge rate of a Mini Cooper.

Soon after, domestic rival CATL went one better with its 1,300 kW of charging power, enough to deliver 323 miles of range in five minutes. For context, Europe’s fastest-charging EVs, like the Porsche Taycan, fill their batteries at a mere 320 kW.

Some Western brands might need a rapid-response unit of their own, since not only are their sales falling in China, but the popularity of Chinese upstarts elsewhere is surging.

China’s closing of the gap to, and in many cases overtaking, US and European carmakers isn’t due to cash and copying alone.