The Demise of the Global Ice Industry

The precipitous growth of the EV industry in China and its rise to global leadership are astounding and could not have been predicted a decade ago. This growth was propelled by Chinese central government initiatives embedded in several five-year plans that directed attention to a vaguely defined idea of 'new energy' vehicles (NEVs). Bottom-up responses to these initiatives involved many new entrepreneurial startups, intense interprovincial competition, and local government support for NEVs. The surge of entrepreneurial startups enabled China to lead in production and technological innovation in this developing EV industry and led to the disruption of the internal combustion engine industry. The Element analyzes how the dismissal of Tesla as a curiosity led to China's global dominance in the EV industry and to batteries becoming the most important arena of global technological competition in the early twenty-first century. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.