China’s electric vehicle industry is preparing to take on the world. Is America ready?

Once seen as a producer of clumsy knock-offs, Chinese carmakers have catapulted to the forefront of the growing global EV industry.

This year’s Shanghai auto show has a clear message for visitors: China is now a global leader in innovation, and it wants the world to know. The massive, thrumming exhibition that took place in the country’s financial capital over the past two weeks boasted over 60 football fields of floorspace, packed full of carmakers using the event to unveil a raft of new models with curtain-pulling reveals. To a soundtrack of bass-thumping music, big brands showed off everything from electric batteries that can run for hundreds of miles on a five-minute charge to flying vehicles and cars with cutting-edge assisted driving, while armies of live streamers broadcast the specs to viewers across the country and crowds thronged to check out the new tech. And unlike in decades past, when cars from legacy makers like GM, Volkswagen or BMW were the showpieces, this year it was China’s electric vehicle (EV) vanguard that were the ones to watch. Case in point: All eyes were on the reveal of a hotly anticipated electric sportscar from BYD, an EV giant that’s also China’s top carmaker. Its new Denza Z is “a testament to pure emotional design” and “extreme performance,” Wolfgang Egger, an ex-Audi and Lamborghini designer who now directs BYD’s design, told a cheering crowd as he whisked off a covering to reveal the bright blue coupe. (“We love you,” some voices shouted back.) In another hall, crowds waited in a line stretching outside the venue doors to see offerings from Chinese electronics giant-turned-carmaker Xiaomi. Others craned their necks to catch sight of Nio’s sleek ET9 luxury sedan, a rival to BMW’s 7-series or Porsche’s Panamera, shimmy and shake to the music as it showed off its suspension and automatic doors.