I am interested in the politics of technology, beyond digital.

8/ All in all, coming back from this visit and having seen many other models and showrooms one can only be in awe of the level of technological sophistication of this industry. It will be very hard for Western companies to compete.

7/ The quality of cars is very high. #XPeng is the EV firm with the highest customer satisfaction in China, and it has started to export to the Middle East. In the picture the new P7 model.

6/ Strong vertical integration was clearly seen in the plant, with different stages in the car production happening at short distance. This is to a great extent enabled by the fact that EVs are far more simple mechanically compared with internal combustion engine cars.

5/ It is now also producing its own custom-built AI microchip called "Turing", in a manifestation of its broader ambition in "future mobility" and self-driving cars.

4/ Differently from #BYD, which also produces it own batteries, #XPeng sources them from other companies and in particular CALB. But otherwise the firm is strongly vertically integrated as it produces internally the car body, power train, electronics and software.

3/ Over the course of the visit we saw different production departments: the stamping, welding, final assembly and packing. The first two sections are almost completely automated, while the latter are still quite labor-intensive.

2/ However automotive is still very much the core business of the company and where it is reaping impressive results. Last month the company celebrated a 73% growth in deliveries and its stock price has surged significantly this year.

1/ One of many EV brands in China (by some counts as many as 90) #Xpeng has become famous recently because of the IRON humanoid Robot. The firm CEO Xiaopeng He was described as "Chinese Elon Musk" with ambitions in many other industries (such as low altitude flying vehicles).

Thanks Osmond, I think that the initial tweet captures well the contradiction of conflict around the state that we are now witnessing

eheh

I have missed this

The article is part of a special issue on 'The Political Economy of Green-Digital Transition', guest edited by Edelmilson Paraná on Globalizations. We also want to thank the anonymous reviewers for the useful comments on our article.

This shortcoming is becoming even more apparent as the world faces the return of (new) great power politics, and the EU finds itself under heavy pressure from the Trump's administration to renounce to any pretence of political autonomy and technological sovereignty.

Further we underline (2) the emphasis on technology adoption, rather than the expansion of productive capacities (basically the EU continues to adopt much of the tech it adopts). This leads to the paradox that NGEU may further entrench EU tech dependency on the US and China.

We highlight: (1) a tension between two competing narratives, short-term economic recovery ('recovery narrative'), and long-term technological transformation ('modernisation narrative'), with the NGEU ending up focusing more on the former.