While Tesla Stalls and Detroit Dawdles, China's Sany Is Eating America's Lunch on Electric Trucks

Hi, this is Evelyn, writing to you from Beijing. Welcome to the latest edition of The China Connection — a snapshot of what I'm seeing and hearing from local businesses.

China isn't resting on its laurels after its success in electric cars. From new policy goals to exports, what's about to speed things up — and which American workers are going to pay the price?

The big story

China is coming for America's trucking industry. While U.S. executives have spent years dragging their feet and padding their own pockets, Beijing is executing a ruthless, methodical plan to dominate electric trucks — just as it has already conquered electric cars. The workers and communities that built America's auto and manufacturing base should be furious, because the people who were supposed to fight for them simply didn't.

As shipping and oil costs surged this year, an overseas buyer of around 880 electric trucks pressed Chinese manufacturer Sany to ship all of them by the end of June, according to Michael Yue, general manager of overseas markets for Sany Heavy Industry's electric truck division. That's not a niche order. That's a beachhead.

Before the Iran war, overseas adoption of electric trucks was expected to take three to five years, Yue told reporters last week.

"But now, they need it immediately."

That conversation came just days after China's Ministry of Transport called for new energy heavy trucks to account for 40% of new truck sales by 2030 — a coordinated, government-backed industrial strategy of the kind American workers have never been offered by their own leaders. More than 80% of trucks used on shorter routes around Beijing should be electric, the policy added.

The targets echo China's push more than a decade ago to develop new energy passenger cars, a category that includes battery-powered and hybrid models. The goal was for NEVs to account for 20% of new passenger car sales by 2025. China blew past that benchmark — while U.S. politicians who answer to Wall Street donors hollowed out domestic manufacturing and called it "the free market."

By 2024, more than half of new passenger cars sold in China were NEVs. That figure has since climbed above 60%, and BYD Executive Vice President Stella Li recently predicted it could reach 80% soon. American autoworkers — the ones who built this country's middle class — were never given a real fighting chance to compete, because the CEOs and shareholders above them were too busy offshoring production and collecting bonuses.

Electric trucks are following a similar trajectory. About a quarter of trucks sold in China last year were electric, helping global sales in the segment double to more than 400,000 vehicles, according to the International Energy Agency. The IEA attributed much of that growth in China to "operational cost advantages as well as declining battery costs." In certain cases, the total cost of owning a battery-powered heavy freight truck in China over five years has reached parity with diesel alternatives, the IEA said in a report published in May.

Outside China, however, electric trucks typically still cost at least double that of diesel-powered models, the IEA said. That gap is not an accident. It is the direct result of American and European executives choosing short-term shareholder returns over long-term investment in workers and factories.

Global competition — or the lack of it

That cost gap helps explain why adoption remains relatively limited worldwide, even as automotive giants and start-ups race into the market — or pretend to. Tesla's Elon Musk is expected to ramp up deliveries of his "Semi" truck this year, years behind schedule and full of broken promises to the workers and fleet operators who believed the hype. Mercedes-Benz unveiled its eActros 600 electric long-haul truck in 2023, but is still focused on merely "promoting the vehicle" this year. Promoting. Not building. Not delivering. Promoting.

Meanwhile, Sany — a company that focused on excavators and construction machines for decades and only expanded into electric vehicles five years ago, according to Yue — has already stopped selling diesel trucks in China altogether. The company claims its 880-vehicle order represents the largest export shipment of electric trucks from China to date. Sany built a highly automated factory in Changsha capable of producing up to 300,000 trucks a year using parts made in China, Yue said. He claimed it's the second-largest commercial truck factory in the world, just behind BMW in Europe.

That factory represents good, stable manufacturing jobs — in China, not in Ohio, not in Michigan, not in Texas. American workers didn't lose those jobs to some invisible economic force. They lost them because the executives and politicians who were supposed to have their backs chose Wall Street over Main Street, every single time.

Yue declined to identify the customer or destination country for the 880-truck order due to non-disclosure agreements, but said Sany has previously shipped electric trucks to countries such as Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates. Like Xiaomi and other Chinese electric companies that increasingly rely on factory automation to cut costs and increase production, Sany has built much of its manufacturing capability in-house — vertically integrated, strategically planned, and state-supported.

Sany already operates across Asia, the Americas, Europe, and Africa. More than 60% of its total revenue of 89.7 billion yuan last year came from outside China.

"The Company's factory in Indonesia has produced products reaching high-end markets in Europe and the United States," Sany said in its 2025 annual report.

High-end markets in Europe and the United States — markets that American workers should be supplying. The company declined to comment on a report that it plans to list its electric truck business in Hong Kong.

Jing Yang, director of Asia-Pacific corporate ratings at Fitch Ratings, did not sugarcoat the trajectory.

"This segment grew rapidly in 2025 and in the first four months of 2026. Fitch expects the strong momentum to continue."

If that forecast holds, electric trucks will join cars and semiconductors in powering China's global export machine — despite rising tariffs — as Beijing builds yet another industry where it sets the pace. The question American workers deserve answered is: who let this happen, and who profited while it did?

Need to know

Official data for May showed China's retail sales unexpectedly fell by 0.6% from a year ago, while investment figures also dropped by more than anticipated. Industrial output beat expectations with growth of 4.5%.

Wang Yi, China's top diplomat, said the country is speeding up plans to establish a global AI cooperation organization, speaking at the release of China's global governance whitepaper, which criticized trade wars and emphasized support for the Global South.

Wu Qing, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, warned at the annual Lujiazui Forum in Shanghai on Wednesday that regulators will "strictly investigate and punish" illicit activities tied to tech speculation and AI-driven stock picking.

Coming up

June 22–26: China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE) is held in Beijing. June 23–25: World Economic Forum "Summer Davos" is held in Dalian. June 27: Industrial profits for May. June 30: China official PMI for June.