James Kynge

And this is why Chinese exports this year are likely to rise, in my view, above 4 trillion US dollars.

That's up from about 3.8 trillion last year.

And that will be the biggest proportion of total world exports ever in history, according to my research.

So I think this BYD phenomenon is connected to a much bigger phenomenon, which is truly epoch-making in terms of global history.

When it comes to BYD itself, I think the salient characteristics are the ones that you've described.

It's technology, it's world-class.

but it comes in at a price point that really blows Western car companies out of the water.

I drove a BYD EV in Germany a couple of years ago.

It seemed to me like an excellent car.

The biggest problem I had was understanding the instructions, because of course the car speaks to you, but I don't speak any German, and this was all in German.

So that was a bit of an issue.

But the one I rode was the BYD Atto 2.

That costs about €22,990, which is a lot less than, you know, the Teslas and some of the other EVs on sale in Europe.

And as you've already mentioned, Alice...

The key aspect now and the new news here is the charging technology because BYD this month has just unveiled something called the Blade Battery 2.0.

This is a game changer, complete game changer.

This means that you can charge

from 10% of the charge to 70% of the battery charge in just five minutes.

It just takes five minutes.

That's equivalent, I think, to about the same amount of time that somebody spends at the pump putting gas into their car.