Where will be the Detroit of electric vehicles?

Chongqing’s mountainous, cyberpunk panoramas and sticky summer heat seem worlds away from flat and dry Detroit. But carmakers in the Chinese metropolis cannot stop drawing parallels with the American city. Standing outside one of Chongqing’s sprawling car-assembly plants, a boss at Changan, a state-owned auto giant, notes with pleasure that the sheer number of cars being produced in the city – some 2.5 million in 2024 – has earned it the moniker “Motown of China”.

In many senses, Chongqing has surpassed its American rival. Most importantly, it makes hundreds of thousands more cars per year, as do several other Chinese cities. But the comments reflect a more profound aspiration: that Chongqing can be the defining city of the electric vehicle, much as Detroit was of the petrol car.