This article says the “top 5 brands” for EVs in Thailand are Chinese. BYD is the only one I am familiar with, but I confirm I saw with my own two eyes that there are BYD dealerships and cars on the road in Thailand. They don’t make up a large proportion of cars you see because there are a lot of older vehicles on the road, but if you pay attention to other cars on the road for a couple minutes you can almost always spot one. One thing that surprised me is e-bikes have not caught on. The spike in gas (“petrol”) prices has not made any visible dent in the motorcycle culture. I did however see electric “tuk-tuks”, which are the rough equivalent of golf carts that used to run on filthy lawn mower engines. This is a big win for air and noise pollution levels. In general, Japanese car brands are dominant in Thailand, with the only American brands you see being Ford pickup trucks.

I was also in Singapore (an entirely unplanned, thanks to the self-proclaimed “world’s best airline”) for 24 hours. I did not see any Chinese brands there. The taxis I was in seemed exceptionally quiet and I suspect they were hybrids.

I did not see any autonomous vehicles in either country. This surprised me a bit since Singapore in particular would seem an ideal candidate given the perfect state of the roads, signs, markings, and well-tamed drivers. But even in Thailand, I would say road markings and driver behavior are at least as good as the US, and traffic signals are actually more advanced (generally arrows and count-down timers for all lanes, even in relatively rural areas – seriously, this is not that hard to do.) They must not be allowed as a matter of policy.