Growing exports of Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) could help China unseat Japan as the world’s largest car exporter, analysts said. “Rising exports are a clear sign that Chinese carmakers’ development and manufacturing capabilities have largely improved following four decades of efforts,” said Chen Jinzhu, CEO of consultancy Shanghai Mingliang Auto Service. “Chinese companies like BYD and Geely will become strong contenders in the global automotive market.”
China is now the world’s second-largest vehicle exporter after overtaking Germany last year. It shipped 3.11 million units overseas in 2022, including 2.53 million cars and 580,000 commercial vehicles, an increase of 54.4% from 2021, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM). China is closing in on Japan’s export volume, which recorded flat overseas car sales last year. Japanese carmakers shipped 3.2 million vehicles abroad in the first 11 months of 2022, almost unchanged from a year earlier, according to MarkLines, a car industry data provider. In 2021, Japan exported 3.82 million cars, and it is expected to post a year-on-year decline once the full-year results are tallied.
Citic Securities forecast in a research report last month that China’s car exports could hit 5.5 million units in 2030, of which 2.5 million would be EVs. Amid slowing domestic sales in the latter half of 2022, exports gave a much-needed boost to the auto industry that provides one in every six jobs to the country’s workforce of 870 million people. “Exports are a growth engine, as China’s share of the global auto market continues to rise,” Beijing-based research firm Gavekal Dragonomics said in a report earlier this month. “The country’s prowess in EVs in particular has propelled sales in markets such as Europe, which now account for about a quarter of total auto exports.” A complete supply chain, a strong EV battery sector and a focus on global expansion are helping Chinese carmakers to win market share abroad.
William Li, CEO of Nio, said the Shanghai-based start-up’s EVs, which feature sophisticated in-car entertainment systems and autonomous driving technology, will appeal to customers in Europe and North America and drive export volumes by 2027. Since the early 1980s, China’s car market has been dominated by foreign brands as their mainland ventures churned out millions of vehicles every year to take a lion’s share of the world’s largest automotive market.
In the first 11 months of 2022, foreign car brands still accounted for 50.8% of the market. However, it is a very different story in the EV segment, where Chinese brands enjoyed an 84.7% share in the same period, the South China Morning Post reports.
