The electric car pulling up to the conference hall was Chinese. The leader who stepped out was not.
The climate-friendly ride was carrying President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, the host of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference, a gathering of dozens of world leaders in the Amazonian city of Belém.
The vehicle, a sleek black SUV made by the Chinese automaker BYD, was part of a fleet of electric and hybrid cars assembled to shuttle delegations to the summit’s opening Thursday, where they began negotiations on ways to cut emissions of planet-warming gases and slow down climate change.
“We need to embrace a new way of life, a more just, resilient and low-carbon development model,” Lula said in his opening remarks Thursday.
That Brazil chose Chinese electric vehicles as the official means of transporting Lula and other world leaders sent a clear signal to many: In its quest to transform its roads and its economy, Latin America’s largest nation would be turning to China.
The gesture highlighted the spectacular inroads that Chinese climate technologies have made in Brazil. It also underscored the absence of the United States at this year’s talks, known as COP30, which President Donald Trump is not attending.
“The world is moving on, even without U.S. political and technological leadership,” said Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research organisation. “With these cars, Brazil is signalling that it has other options.”
Electric vehicles are widely seen as crucial in the fight against climate change because they reduce the world’s reliance on fossil fuels and eliminate emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary heat-trapping gas that’s warming Earth’s atmosphere.
While European and American automakers have struggled to pivot to making vehicles powered by electricity, China has gained ground by offering electric cars built with advanced technologies at lower prices than those of competitors such as Tesla. This has made Chinese cars especially attractive in developing countries with less spending power.
China also controls the supply chains for the critical minerals that are needed to make the powerful batteries that go into these cars. The country is vying with United States for access to these strategic minerals, which are considered key to the technologies of the future and are also plentiful in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America.
Chinese electric cars have been rapidly gaining market share in Asia and Europe, now accounting for roughly two-thirds of the global market. In Brazil, the world’s sixth-largest car market, more than 80% of electric vehicles sold are Chinese.
And Chinese automakers have made it clear that they have even bigger plans for Latin America.
Last month, BYD inaugurated its biggest factory outside Asia, at a plant in Bahia state, in northeastern Brazil, that was once run by Ford. Also this year, GWM, another Chinese company, took over a massive plant that once belonged to the German automaker Mercedes-Benz. The plan is to sell the electric cars produced at these factories across Brazil and the rest of Latin America.
It is already clear whether electric vehicles are leaving a mark on Brazilian cities, including in Belém, a port city of 1.3 million near the mouth of the Amazon River that is frequently choked by traffic.
On a weekday just before the summit kicked off, the streets were gridlocked, but the clouds of exhaust were thinner than they had once been. The roads were dotted with electric cars, humming quietly in the midday traffic. Dignitaries zipped around in convoys made up of GWM pickup trucks, their windows frosted by air-conditioning. Electric buses shuttled passengers around the city.
“This technology is transforming the whole world,” Kennedy said. “And China has jumped into this space.”
