Chinese truck manufacturer Windrose recently announced plans to build a new assembly plant in the USA. The company’s CEO described this as a “direct challenge” to the Tesla Semi. This will allow him to circumvent the high tariffs on electric vehicles produced in China.

Windrose brought one of its all-electric Class 8 trucks to the ACT Expo in Las Vegas earlier this year, giving journalists and fleet buyers a chance to see the truck firsthand—and even though it was a pre-production truck, Windrose impressed with what appeared to be a slick user interface, a well-finished interior, and solid construction.

This sleek user interface is more important on the Windrose than on other HDEVs because Windrose hopes to use externally mounted cameras that power vertically oriented tablets instead of traditional side mirrors. If the vehicle receives DOT approval, these cameras will help the Windrose BEV trucks achieve a drag coefficient of 0.2755 – which the company says is the lowest of any heavy-duty truck available.

Windrose interior and camera “mirror”

“The US market is open to Chinese heavy-duty electric trucks because tariffs on imported trucks are much lower than those on cars,” says Han Wen, CEO of Windrose. “Many of our customers are US companies, for example Nike… and we can serve them in their home market.”

The company’s trucks are equipped with a 729 kWh battery that can achieve a range of 400 km (248 miles) in just over 30 minutes using Borg Warner’s latest 960 kW fast chargers. This is possible thanks to a pair of liquid-cooled charging terminals that support high-power super-fast charging of individual vehicles using a single gun with a maximum output of 600 amps.

According to Windrose, “most” of the approximately 6,500 standing orders are for US companies. These orders could ideally be fulfilled by the company’s planned US assembly plant in Georgia, which will assemble chassis and other vehicle parts made in China. The company also plans to expand its manufacturing activities in the EU. Another plant is to be built in an as-yet-unnamed EU country to avoid tariffs on Chinese trucks.

Electrek’s opinion

It doesn’t seem to matter whether we’re talking about the low or high end of the electric vehicle market, the Chinese are there with solid products that seem ready to give Western automakers serious competition in their home markets. Whether the ridiculous central seating position works better in China than it does in the US, however, remains to be seen.