For years, foreign automakers in China had a bead on customers drawn to luxury brands, like the Cao family in Shanghai. Not anymore.Ben Cao and his wife, Rachel, both 36, are trading down from two Porsches to one, a gasoline-fueled $290,000 Porsche 911 sports car, and buying their first electric vehicle, a $70,000 sport utility vehicle designed and manufactured in China by a company called Li Auto.“If you’re sitting in a Li Auto, the first feeling is of luxury,” said Mr. Cao, a business consultant.The rapid rise of Chinese electric carmakers like Li Auto, BYD, Nio and Xpeng Motors is the main preoccupation of the executives, engineers and designers arriving in Shanghai for the start of the city’s auto show next Tuesday. The country is now the …
