Is it good or bad?
There will be an investigation into the extent to which electric cars from Chinese factories in Europe may compete unfairly with EVs from Western manufacturers. Chinese electric cars would flood the market. How are things going in the Netherlands? AutoWeek delved into the figures.
To get straight to the point: the Dutch market is not yet flooded with electric cars from China. In the first eight months of this year, a total of 257,059 new cars were registered in the Netherlands. Of these, 65,501 were fully electric, just shy of 25.5 percent. Of those electric cars, how many were Chinese-made products? That is a question we can answer with some caveats. Nowadays it is no longer so easy to define what is and what is not a Chinese brand.
The lion’s share of Volvo’s shares is indeed held by the Chinese Zhejiang Geely and Polestar – which, like Volvo, has its headquarters in Sweden – also has deep Chinese connections. In fact, every Polestar you see on the road is produced in China. The current Smart is 50 percent owned by Mercedes-Benz, but the remaining half of the shares are also owned by the Chinese Geely. The home base of the reborn Smart is also officially in China. In this article we distinguish between Chinese entrants and non-Chinese brands. Brands new – or returning – to the European market such as BYD, Xpeng, Nio and MG therefore fall under Chinese brands with EVs, Smart, Lotus and Polestar in this case do not. For the sake of completeness, we also make the calculations in this article where we count Lotus, Polestar and Smart as Chinese. Which will soon include the Chinese-built Volvo EX30 – a sister model of the Zeekr X and the Smart #1? That is a dilemma for later.
Chinese electric cars registered in the Netherlands (Jan-Aug 2023)
| Brand | Fashion model | Number |
| Aiways | U5 | 94 |
| BYD | Atto 3 | 670 |
| BYD | Han | 16 |
| BYD | Tongs | 16 |
| Hongqi | E-HS9 | 42 |
| JAC | iEV7S | 1 |
| MG | 4 | 1,483 |
| MG | 5 | 600 |
| MG | Marvel R | 116 |
| MG | ZS | 1,204 |
| Nio | EL7 | 35 |
| Nio | ET5 | 54 |
| Nio | ET7 | 48 |
| Xpeng | P5 | 1 |
| Xpeng | P7 | 37 |
| Total | 4,417 | |
| Lotus | Eletre | 14 |
| Polestar | 2 | 1,362 |
| Smart | #1 | 35 |
| Total | 5,828 |
Not even seven
What seems? In the first eight months of this year, according to ‘the narrow’ definition of what a Chinese electric car is, 4,417 Chinese EVs were registered in our country. This means that 6.74 percent of all EVs registered in the Netherlands this year were Chinese cars. If we include Lotus, Polestar and Smart, we arrive at a total of 5,828 units and a ‘Chinese share’ of 8.9 percent in EV registrations.
Mind you, there is still a decent fleet of Chinese electric models on the way. The first BYD’s Dolphin, Seal and Seal U have yet to be delivered and MG has already announced that it will bring a whole bunch of new models to the Netherlands next year. We also do not yet see the Xpeng G9 in the registration figures. Polestar also has an extensive range of electric newcomers in the pipeline, Smart is expanding with the #3 and with Zeekr Geely has another brand ready for the Netherlands. Meanwhile, Chinese brands such as Omoda from Chery, Hozon Auto and Leapmotor are eager to sink their teeth into the European market.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl