Jeremy Clarkson's prediction about China's automotive industry quietly came true when no one suspected it

Over a decade ago, Jeremy Clarkson and James May went to China to investigate China’s rapidly growing car industry.

The country’s automotive industry was already on the rise back then, and the BBC wanted boots on the ground to find out more about it.

Jeremy Clarkson and James May made two predictions about the Chinese car industry.

And, amazingly, they both came true.

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Jeremy Clarkson and James May were absolutely spot on

In 2011, Jeremy Clarkson and James May traveled to China to find out what was going on with the country’s car industry.

Their conclusion – summarized and condensed – was that Chinese cars were still fairly terrible back then, but that wasn’t going to last long.

The trajectory was already pretty clear.

“In 1977, there were one million cars in China. By 2008, there were 51 million. Today [in 2011], there are 85 million,” James May said in the video.

May and Clarkson concluded that the number could only go up, and it did.

In 2025, there are 350 million cars in China, which is around the same as the US and Germany combined.

Before wrapping up the show, Clarkson and May also answered the question that created the whole premise for the episode.

“So are we all going to be driving Chinese cars in the future? Probably,” they said, half ironic and half serious.

Well, they were spot on.

And it gets better, and spookier, because Clarkson also made another prediction that turned out to be incredibly accurate.

“By 2025, the road network [in China] will be big enough to cover the whole of the British Isles… 20 times over,” Clarkson said.

He was right.

How China built its position in the car world

When Clarkson and May went to China, no one outside the country was buying Chinese cars, chiefly because they were not very good.

They were cheap, but they were usually pretty hopeless, and they generally looked bad, too.

Mostly because they were designed to be rip-offs of European vehicles.

Clearly, that strategy wasn’t working, which is why Chinese automakers decided to focus more on the emerging EV market, mostly because no one else was.

For years, Tesla was the only ‘serious’ EV maker around, and most legacy automakers were a bit slow and hesitant when it came to electric cars.

There was a void in the market, and China decided to fill that void.

Today, Chinese automakers are occasionally still shamelessly copycatting vehicles made in Europe or the US, but a lot less often.

Not only that, they started nicking talent from their European rivals.

BYD’s head designer is German, and he used to work at Lamborghini and Audi.

Xiaomi did the same for its new European R&D center in Munich, which is led by Fabian Schmolz as head of exterior design, who also used to work at Lamborghini.

So the bottom line is May and Clarkson were right.

And at this rate, who knows what the market in China is going to look like in 15 years?