Volkswagen revamps its approach in China in bid to overtake upstart EV makers

BEIJING (AP) — As auto giant Volkswagen AG races to catch up with upstart Chinese competitors, it has drivers like 26-year-old Ren Yiling in mind.

She is young and wants to play video games in her car. The digital features of her Zeekr 001, a European-designed electric car from China’s Geely Holding Group, appeal to her. She uses her smartphone to help her parents adjust their seats and tells an animated voice assistant to open the window or play music.

“I once sung karaoke in the car when travelling a long way with my family,” she said. “To me, the car is more like an entertainment place. I am a singer.”

Foreign automakers have been caught flat-footed in China by an electric vehicle boom that has shaken up the market, the world’s largest, over the last three years. Taking a page from Tesla, China’s automakers and hundreds of start-ups have developed EVs loaded with tablet-like screens, AI-enabled information and entertainment options and autonomous driving capabilities.

EV sales in China, encouraged by green energy subsidies and tax breaks, jumped from 900,000 units in 2020 to 5.1 million last year, accounting for 24% of new car sales, according to the China Passenger Car Association, an industry group. The boom caters to a new breed of car buyers who equate an EV with digital connectivity and are demanding smartphone features in their vehicles.

That has left makers like Volkswagen, which sells about one-third of its cars in China, scrambling to develop new models for a very different market than back home, and expanding far beyond its roots in China as a maker of no-frills sedans used by taxi fleets.

The Volkswagen Group, which also includes Audi and Porsche, plans to launch 40 new models in China over the next three