At this year’s Beijing Auto Show, a retired Chinese bureaucrat bent down to run his hands over the hood of a sleek sports coupe billed as the world’s fastest battery-powered car, and he smiled like a proud father.
In a way, that’s exactly what he was. Two decades earlier, Wan Gang persuaded China’s State Council to throw its vast power behind the risky, unproven technology of electric cars. He advocated using government money, including subsidies, to help create a world champion industry that would surpass Western automakers. That coupe he was admiring at the April auto show? It was built by homegrown NIO Inc.
“He’s the father of China’s electric-vehicle industry,” said Levi Tillemann, a former U.S. Department of Energy adviser and author of “The Great Race: The Global Quest for the Car of the Future.” “Without Wan Gang, it’s unlikely China would have pushed to surpass the West. That was his big idea.”
For Chamberlain, these are beneficial changes. Since 2016, the American scientist has run Volta Energy Technologies, a battery startup in Naperville, Illinois. He said the revolution wrought by Wan means it no longer matters if the U.S. rolls back emissions or fuel-efficiency standards, as President Donald Trump talks about.
“Whether it’s Ford or General Motors or VW, or Hyundai or Toyota, if they want to participate in the Chinese market they must have electric vehicles,” Chamberlain said. “I’m happy for Wan Gang because that was his vision from many years ago.”
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