- Oh my God!
These guys are in Shenzhen, a city in south China that's one of China's tech hubs.
Electric cars are everywhere here.
China has never been one of the world's great car-making countries.
But what's happening in Shenzhen right now could be a glimpse into the future.
A future where the world gets its cars not only from the US, Japan, and Germany, but also from China.
I'm Isabelle Niu. This is Quartz.
The Tesla bros from before are actually not your typical electric car drivers in Shenzhen.
These guys are: cab drivers.
Every day around noon, a food truck comes with $2 lunch for taxi drivers waiting for their cars to charge.
Shenzhen has more than 12,000 electric taxis,
and they all need to be charged for at least an hour a day.
Charging stations like this are popping up everywhere in Shenzhen.
Electric cars have become a big part of people's daily lives here in a way that just hasn't happened in most of the West.
Qiu Kaijun runs a news site for electric vehicle industry insiders.
Most of the cars sold in China still run on gasoline.
The country has a long way to go before it's fully electric.
But it now buys and sells more electric vehicles, or EVs, than the rest of the world combined.
But China also has something most Western countries don't:
A government with the power to subsidize big bets that would be too risky in a more free-market economy.
The market EVs wasn't big enough because of their high cost, and the hassle of charging them.
China dealt with that by building tons of charging stations,
making up the price differences with huge subsidies,
and making it really inconvenient for a lot of people to drive gas cars.
In Shenzhen, if you want to buy a gas car, you have to pay over $10,000 just for the license plate.
And in Beijing, you're only allowed to drive a gas car on certain days of the week.
Ren Bin has been a full-time driver on ride-hailing apps for four years.
Three months ago, he switched to driving this electric car.
Subsidies are only part of the reason, though.
He didn't really have a choice.
Recently, Shenzhen announced that in two years, drivers of gasoline cars will no longer be allowed to drive for ride hailing apps at all.
China isn't the only country trying to tip the scale for EVs.
In Germany, local governments are starting to ban gas and diesel cars.
Japan has offered subsidies for EVs since the mid 90s.
But China has gone the farthest and the fastest.
It's estimated that, between 2016 and 2020, the government plans to pay out $56 billion in subsidies.
The government has also thrown money at Chinese companies that want to make EVs,
even if they have barely any car-making experience.
One reason for doing this is the environment;
air quality in China's largest cities is famously bad.
But there's an even more important reason:
China believes EVs are the future of all cars.
So it sees EVs as its ticket to dominating the global auto market, surpassing the US, Germany, and Japan.
Here's one place that dream is being built:
A Shenzhen-based car company called BYD.
- Hi, nice to meet you.
So this is your headquarters?
- Yeah.
BYD, which stands for Build Your Dream, isn't super well-known outside China yet.
But it's backed by Warren Buffett, and it's the world's second-largest manufacturer of electric cars.
It's exported electric buses to places like London, California, and Paris.
And that's a big deal.
The government's push for EVs has allowed Chinese companies to become major players in the global auto market for the first time ever.
Another Chinese company, CATL, just became BMW's official battery supplier.
They replaced Samsung.
In an electric car, the battery makes up as much as 40% of the cost.
If a car brand like BMW comes to rely on China for that,
that's a major change in the order of the global auto industry.
The internal combustion engines that power our cars have been around for over a century.
The end of that could be closer than we think.
Batteries are getting cheaper, and EVs could be as cheap as gas and diesel cars by 2025.
Governments around the world are already setting timetables to ban the sales of gas and diesel cars in the next few decades.
When that happens, whoever is best positioned to own the EV market now could come to dominate the global car market.
In the near future, more and more cities might start to look like Shenzhen.
And the whole world could be driving cars that are made in China.