Once an 'embarrassment' China's EV industry now leads the world Tue 21 Jul 2026 at 4:41am , updatedTue 21 Jul 2026 at 8:04am In some Chinese-made electric vehicles, you can swap your empty battery for a new one in under five minutes. It sounds too good to be true, but the process is simple: drive your car into a special swapping station, take your hands off the steering wheel, then let robots take out the old battery and pop in a fresh one. The tech is just one example of how Chinese EV companies have pushed the boundaries of automotive invention on their path to electric worldwide domination. Loading...Other Chinese companies have developed super-fast EV chargers that can replenish a car's power to nearly 80 per cent in five minutes. And finding a place to charge your car, a challenge in other parts of the world, is rarely a problem in China. The country now boasts the largest EV charging network in the world with about one public charger for every 10 cars. Australia, by comparison, has one public charger available for every 45 electric vehicles. The extraordinary infrastructure and technology advancements have seen China largely overcome the problem of EV "range anxiety", the fear of not having enough power to complete a trip, and helped put China at the forefront of the world's electric vehicle revolution. China is now the undisputed global leader of the EV industry, producing almost 75 per cent of the world's EVs. And it is not just production where China dominates. The country is widely considered superior in all stages of the EV process: from conception and development through to manufacturing and exporting to the rest of the world. But China's EV juggernaut did not happen by accident. The grand EV plan China's government decided