China Just Invented a Battery That Ends Gas Cars Forever

Four cutting-edge developments proving China is setting the pace for the future.

Well everyone, China has just invented a new battery that could literally mark the end of gas car usage forever. And honestly, this is why I love sharing stories about China-every day, the country is developing technologies that are shaping the future of our world. But Chinese innovation goes far beyond new battery tech. In this article, I’m going to highlight four major breakthroughs China achieved in 2025, each of which will deliver benefits for many years to come . From a record-breaking bridge, to world-class AI models, and nuclear energy breakthroughs.

Now I’ve covered the rise of Chinese EVs for several years now and while EVs continue to gain popularity across the globe, there is still one major issue. The limited range of batteries and the constant need for charging. But with China’s latest development in battery technology, electric cars can now travel more than 1,000 kilometers on a single charge, which means this new battery could make a round trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco without stopping even once to charge the battery.

China’s scientists essentially made a self-healing battery and it’s going to completely change the future of electric vehicles. You see when a normal battery runs for a long time, tiny cracks form between its parts, kind of like how roads crack after too many cars drive on them. These cracks make the battery less efficient and shorten its life. So Chinese scientists invented a special type of glue, made from iodine — that automatically moves to the damaged spots while the battery is working. It fills the gaps and sticks everything back together again, exactly like how your skin heals an open cut on your finger. This new technology allows an electric battery to store 86% more power than before. And it’s something that no other scientist in the world has even attempted at making. If you want to see the full technical details of the battery you can check that out here, but this leads me to the second recent breakthrough for China and it’s the construction of the tallest bridge that has ever been constructed.

Located in one of China’s poorest regions, Guizhou, this mega project shockingly took just three years and eight months to complete and will cut travel time between the two sides of the canyon from two hours to two minutes. In fact, China is one-upping itself, as the previous record for the world’s tallest bridge is being taken from another Chinese bridge in the same province, built in 2016.

The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge soars about 2,050 feet above a river and will bolster the local economy by connecting major tourist spots in the region, as well as becoming a destination in itself. The bridge features a high-speed glass elevator that can send visitors to a coffee spot 2,600 feet above the river. Visitors can bungee jump off the bridge, enjoy views of a waterfall, take in the stunning scenery, or walk across a 1,900-foot-high glass walkway looking down at the ravine below.

This bridge has been going viral on social media because Americans are dumbfounded that it was built in under four years and at a cost of only 300 million dollars. It has been half a century since the United States has taken on challenges like this, and as a result, citizens have forgotten how a government is capable of pulling off such great feats.

People online have been quick to compare the construction of this Chinese bridge to the repair of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed in Baltimore last year after being struck by a ship. The repair of that bridge, which already has much of its structure in place, is expected to take four years and cost two billion dollars to repair. Meanwhile, China has built the tallest bridge ever. Completely from scratch at a cost of just 300 million dollars and taking only three years and eight months to complete it.

Honestly this story reminds me of a tweet I sent out last month where I shared a video of the world’s largest train station in Chongqing. Whenever people ask me, Cyrus, what’s China like? I jokingly respond: I would tell you, but you probably won’t believe me, because many Westerners just simply can’t comprehend how advanced China has become.

But now I want to shift to the 3rd breakthrough of 2025 which is all about AI and how one of America’s biggest tech companies Airbnb is actually using Chinese AI to power their entire AI ecosystem. Brian Chesky, the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, made headlines last month when he revealed to the media his company uses Alibaba’s Qwen model as its primary AI tool. Think about how far China has come in AI development if this American company is not only choosing a Chinese model over ChatGPT, but is also using a model from behind China’s leader, DeepSeek. Chesky said ChatGPT’s integration abilities were “not quite ready” for Airbnb’s needs. In contrast, Alibaba’s Qwen model was “very good” and “also fast and cheap.” There are two key differences that set Chinese AI apart from its American counterparts.The first difference is open vs. closed models. The U.S. focuses on pouring billions into closed-source, profit-driven models, which has led to a massive speculative bubble in the stock market. Some AI analysts predict that this bubble is 17 times larger than the infamous dot-com bust. Even Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has acknowledged the growing AI bubble, as the industry continues to attract hundreds of billions in investments. In stark contrast, China’s approach to AI is radically different. Chinese AI models emphasize real-world applications, and are, most importantly, open-source. Open-source models focus less on investor profitability and allow developers to tailor them to their specific needs, making them more appealing than closed-source giants like OpenAI. To date, Alibaba alone has released over 300 open-source AI models, supporting more than 170,000 derivative models — making it the world’s largest open-source AI ecosystem.

Alibaba co founder Joe Tsai recently stated that the true winner in AI will be determined by “who can adopt it faster,” rather than “who builds the strongest AI model.”He believes China’s emphasis on cost-effective, open-source AI is better suited for faster adoption compared to the U.S. approach, which sinks billions into developing massive, trillion-parameter models. The second difference in Chinese AI philosophy, after open-source, is doing more with less. You might have already heard about the groundbreaking DeepSeek model, but researchers at Huawei have taken that breakthrough a step further. DeepSeek famously used around 2,000 specialized chips when Western models required 16,000 or more. Even more shocking is that it used just $6 million in raw computing power, a tenth of what Meta spends on its AI technology alone.

Chinese engineers have taken this philosophy of beating Western models with a fraction of the chips and funding to the next level. While the U.S. had what seemed like a years-long or even decades-long lead in AI, China’s firms simply didn’t have the hardware to match the performance capabilities of Western firms. But Chinese scientists have overcome this technological hurdle by doing more with less. Huawei has created AI clusters of less advanced chips that can communicate with one another to rival the performance of Western firms.

This has led industry leader and CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, to say the unthinkable:

You heard that right. No one knows the industry better than Huang, and he believes the technological gap shouldn’t be measured in years but in nanoseconds. Clustering massive amounts of these chips and powering increasingly powerful AI models will require huge amounts of energy. This perfectly ties into our fourth and final technology: the massive breakthroughs in Chinese nuclear energy. Take a look at this graph showing the projected power demand for AI data centers alone.

Now, compare that to the outlook for 2025. The current demand is already wreaking havoc on the United States’ electric grid, and as you can see, this demand is only set to explode in the coming decade.

The truth is, the U.S. grid is nowhere close to being prepared for the electricity needs of these massive AI centers. Power output in the country has remained stagnant for over 20 years.In contrast, China has seen almost uninterrupted energy growth year after year to match the increasing demands of the modern world. In fact, China generated more electricity in 2024 than the U.S., EU, and India combined. One of the primary ways they’ve been able to achieve this is by embracing and massively improving nuclear energy. A proven technology that has been neglected by the West for decades.

Take a look at this graph comparing nuclear reactors in the U.S. and China. Not only is China’s construction of new reactors surging as seen in the bottom right corner, but the cost per watt to operate these reactors is consistently the lowest, hugging the bottom of the graph. Contrast that with the United States, where many reactors are outdated, and operating costs are often double that of China’s counterparts.

China is not only investing heavily in traditional reactors, but they are also leading the way with cutting-edge advancements in nuclear technology. Earlier this year, China successfully brought the world’s first thorium reactor online. They’re also breaking records in nuclear fusion development, with scientists achieving plasma temperatures six times hotter than the sun.

To meet the future demand for energy, the United States would need to undertake a massive, nationwide project using a variety of energy sources. So far, politicians from both parties have shown themselves completely incapable of stepping up to this challenge. As a result, big tech companies have been building massive data centers in small towns across the U.S., completely overtaking local grids. To make matters worse, these companies pass the increase in energy costs onto residents. In these towns, power bills have soared, rising a staggering 267% over the past five years.

The build-out of energy infrastructure and who it is designed to serve clearly highlights the difference between the two governments’ approaches. The Chinese government has been preparing for this moment for decades, never letting up on its focus on energy development. Meanwhile, the United States has remained stagnant, focusing more on short-term goals and overseas conflicts rather than investing in its own infrastructure.

It’s clear from these technological developments that China isn’t just catching up to the West; they’re speeding past it. Whether it’s game-changing solid-state batteries, infrastructure projects that leave the West in the dust, or nuclear advancements, China is showing the world that it’s not waiting for permission to lead the 21st century.

These four stories—about EV batteries, infrastructure, AI, and nuclear energy—are just a few examples of China’s recent breakthroughs that are challenging Western narratives and changing the world in real time. And honestly, I could’ve highlighted many more examples of Chinese technological advancements from this year alone. That’s why it’s so important to get information from those who’ve been on the ground and truly understand what’s going on in China.

A visual medium really helps to tell a story like this that is full of facts and figures. To watch the video form of this article as well as keep up to date on the latest breakthroughs in Chinese technology, click the link to my YouTube channel listed below!