Germany’s three automotive giants—Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz—are facing an increasingly difficult balancing act. China remains its largest and most profitable market, yet the recent crisis involving Nexperia, the Dutch chipmaker owned by China’s Wingtech Technology, has once again exposed the structural risks of its deep reliance on Chinese supply chains. The episode has forced all three companies to accelerate efforts to reduce their dependence on China.

The turmoil surrounding Nexperia persists as Wingtech, the Chinese parent company of Nexperia, has formally lodged a complaint with the Dutch government, demanding the withdrawal of its control over Nexperia Netherlands. This follows the Dutch government’s recent announcement suspending the takeover execution amid negotiations with China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), while not revoking the original court ruling that authorized the takeover.

China’s Industrial Association of Power Sources (CIAPS) recently issued a Notice on Referencing the Lithium Iron Phosphate Cost Index and Regulating Industry Development, an effort to halt a years-long price war in lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) materials. By proposing a “cost red line,” the association hopes to curb destructive price-cutting and restore a basic sense of pricing discipline to a market that has become increasingly chaotic.

China’s electric vehicle (EV) makers are shifting more of their R&D toward humanoid robots, betting the next phase of AI competition will centre on physical-world applications rather than in-car systems. As US-China tech tensions rise, automakers including Xpeng, Chery, Nio, BYD, GAC, and Seres are using their EV engineering and autonomous-driving AI to develop robots with autonomous mobility and semantic understanding, positioning embodied intelligence as their next strategic arena.