Author: Megan Burrows

About 20.7 million electric vehicles were sold worldwide in 2025, a 20 percent increase from the previous year. That figure appears to indicate a confidently growing industry, and in the broadest sense, it is. However, a different narrative is emerging beneath the volume figures. Approximately 95% of China’s domestic market is now accounted for by the top ten manufacturers, a significant increase from roughly 60–70% just two or three years ago. Only 25 to 30 of the more than 160 competing EV brands in the market at the beginning of this decade are expected to be financially viable by 2030,…

Something subtly strange appears when you drive through the Lofoten Islands, a group of striking, mountainous islands in Norway’s Arctic Circle where the roads follow the coastline between fishing villages and the summer light never quite goes out. Fast chargers are placed next to parking spots in the red wooden warehouses and supermarkets of small towns with hundreds of residents. Not as innovations, as infrastructure. As commonplace as the gas station signs that once characterized the British motorway landscape, they are becoming progressively less significant. The chargers are largely idle at a Tesla Supercharger bank in Reine, one of the…

Few people outside of China can locate the Inner Mongolian city of Baotou on a map, but it is at the heart of one of the world’s most significant supply chain narratives. The largest rare earth element mine in the world, Bayan-Obo, is located nearby. Over the past thirty years, the area has produced so much of these materials that the nearby soil and groundwater are contaminated with fluorite and arsenic, and the tailings pond, a lake of radioactive thorium waste, has seeped into the local water table. Baotou is the tangible, environmental cost of the world’s rare earth supply…

The Volkswagen factory dominates the view from the platform when you arrive by train in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony. Its facade is adorned with the VW logo, flanked by four chimneys, and it sits next to a canal that passes through a city that exists primarily because of the factory. From the surrounding area, about 60,000 people commute to that complex. 125,000 people are living in the town, and residents observe that even if you don’t work at VW, your friends and half of your schoolmates probably do. It’s Germany’s version of Detroit in the middle of the 20th century: a…

The argument against electric vehicles, as it appears on social media and sometimes in newspaper opinion pieces authored by individuals who find the entire shift to be politically annoying, tends to have a standard format. First, there is an increase in emissions from battery manufacturing. Next, the question of the coal grid. The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s mining industry is then mentioned. By the end, the position has been put together: EVs are merely a convenient political narrative, they are not genuinely green, and the whole thing is basically a scam disguised as environmentalism. It’s a strong argument in…

In its most basic form, the tale of how China came to control the world’s battery supply chain is about an American scientist and a bankrupt American business. Lithium iron phosphate battery chemistry was developed by John Goodenough, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. This technology powers almost all BYD vehicles and, via BYD, a sizable amount of the world’s electric transportation. An American company commercialized its LFP battery. That business failed. The intellectual property was purchased by a Chinese business. The technology never returned after crossing the Pacific. China now controls between 75 and…

In late March 2026, BYD’s annual financial results for 2025 were announced at its expansive Shenzhen headquarters in a tone that was unusual for a company that had spent years setting records. Net profit had dropped to about $4.8 billion, a 19% decrease. Although revenue had increased, it was only by 3.5%, well below expectations. The company’s net profit margin had compressed from 5.2 percent to 4.1 percent in a single year, and its operating cash inflow had declined by more than 50 percent while borrowing had increased fourfold. The domestic market has reached “fever pitch,” according to Wang Chuanfu,…

Elon Musk danced on stage following the announcement of the vote results at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas, in November 2025. A compensation package worth nearly a trillion dollars was just approved by more than 75% of shareholders, provided that the company’s market capitalization increased to $8.5 trillion by 2035, or about eight times its current value. “It’s not just a new chapter for Tesla,” Musk declared. “It’s a new book.” It was a moment that encapsulated everything odd, intriguing, and genuinely challenging to evaluate about the company’s current state: a CEO dancing in front of shareholders who…

A showroom for Omoda and Jaecoo, two Chinese brands owned by state-controlled Chery, now greets the half a million drivers who pass the Hogarth roundabout in west London every week. This is the same prominent location where Tesla famously set up a bright outpost in an attempt to persuade British consumers that it was genuine. There is no nuance to the symbolism. Chinese automakers are familiar with winning markets. They’ve been watching Western brands do this for decades, and now they’re copying the strategy, segment by segment, location by location, throughout a continent that wasn’t prepared for this kind of…

On a clear afternoon drive through Ashburn, Virginia, on Route 7, you’ll come across a section of land that appears to be any other mid-Atlantic suburb from the road: parking lots, low-rise business buildings, and the odd warehouse. A closer look reveals the densest concentration of data centers on the planet, with about 300 facilities spread across a few counties in Loudoun County. Approximately two-thirds of all global internet traffic passes through these facilities at any given time. The buildings have hardly any markings. Signs are not necessary for them. They run nonstop, using resources from the regional electrical grid…