A sleek SUV offers mechanical foot massages, a luxury minivan has rotating seats to help passengers hop into its third row – and a surprising proportion of models offer in-car karaoke with professional-grade speakers. Others have headlights that can project movies onto a wall to make anywhere a drive-in cinema. Here, intelligent driving features are ubiquitous, even in affordable models.
To many consumers peering in from the outside, the options in [China](https://www.cnn.com/world/china) – on display in Beijing this week at the world’s largest auto show – seem like a dream. But to some automakers and politicians around the world, they’re an existential threat.
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A sleek SUV offers mechanical foot massages, a luxury minivan has rotating seats to help passengers hop into its third row – and a surprising proportion of models offer in-car karaoke with professional-grade speakers. Others have headlights that can project movies onto a wall to make anywhere a drive-in cinema. Here, intelligent driving features are ubiquitous, even in affordable models.
To many consumers peering in from the outside, the options in [China](https://www.cnn.com/world/china) – on display in Beijing this week at the world’s largest auto show – seem like a dream. But to some automakers and politicians around the world, they’re an existential threat.
Chinese carmakers are cranking out their offerings at a large scale and a comparatively low price. And there’s another major sell: while [oil and gas costs skyrocke](https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/30/energy/oil-prices-iran-war-wartime-high-blockade-hnk)t due to the Iran war, the vast majority of these cars are electric or hybrid.
The contrast with the US has never been as stark: Washington last year rolled back support for EVs in favor of gas guzzlers, and it has effectively [barred Chinese cars](https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/politics/china-tariffs-biden-trump) from entering the market, citing a need to protect [national security](https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/23/tech/us-car-software-ban-china-russia) and local industry.