If today the impact of China on European market of electric cars is still marginal, the situation could even change radically in the coming years. According to a recent study by the renowned analysis company PwC, by 2025 could be imported to Europe fup to 800,000 cars Made in China, most of them electric. According to the report, this trend would make Europe an automobile importer, with an import surplus of over 221,000 vehicles in 2025. Just to give an idea of the paradigm shift, in 2015, the export surplus in Europe about 1.7 million vehicles, while this year already in 2022 this value will be only 76,000 units.
The shaded change from the PwC report is complete when i Chinese brands will increase their market share and together i European brands They will build more electric vehicles in China. Of the potentially 800,000 cars built in China, about 330,000 would be made by Western automakers such as Tesla, BMW and Renault, Polestar and others that are currently exporting electric vehicles from China to Europe.
According to Felix Kuhnert, an analyst at PwC Germany, European automakers still have supply chain issues, which is why they are focusing on building higher-priced, lower-volume electric vehicles in the old continent. On the contrary, me Chinese manufacturersAfter optimizing their models for the local market, they now focus on Europe and offer several affordable BEV models. Moreover, while previous attempts by Chinese automakers to invade Europe have failed, things could be about to change completely electric carswhere the Asian companies are located instead very competitive.
According to electrification analyst Matthias Schmidt, around 200,000 units are expected to be sold in Europe this year Chinese brand vehicles, around 90,000 of them fully electric, 40,000 plug-in hybrids and the rest with conventional transmissions. At the same time, Western brands will export around 100,000 all-electric vehicles produced in Chinese factories to Europe.
In the first seven months of the year, the main Chinese EV manufacturers emerged MG (SAIC Group) e North Star (Geely Group), with other brands such as no and XPeng which, at least so far, have hardly been able to establish themselves. In the first half of this year, Chinese brands achieved a 5.2% share of the electric vehicle market in Western Europe, up from 3.8% in the first half of 2021.