Sales of Chinese cars in the Netherlands have tripled in two years

Bovag, RAI Association and RDC recently provided insight into how many new passenger cars will be registered in the Netherlands in 2022: 312,129 units. More and more Chinese manufacturers are venturing into a European and therefore also Dutch sales adventure, which makes it interesting to study the sales figures of those relatively young brands from China in more detail.

In 2022, 7,624 new passenger cars of Chinese brands that are relatively new to our market will be sold in the Netherlands. For comparison: in 2021 there were still 4,392 units and in 2020 only 2,634. This means that in 2022 almost three times as many new Chinese cars will be registered as in 2020, a growth rate of 189 percent. We should make a few important caveats here.

First of all, we have not included Volvo and Polestar in the calculation. Although both brands are owned by the Chinese giant Geely and we do include Geely’s Lynk & Co, Volvo and Polestar really have their origins in Europe. In this article we mainly try to map out the trend of the new Chinese brands in the Netherlands.

Which brands do we include that are included in the statistics of Bovag, RAI Association and RDC? Aiways, BYD, JAC, Lynk & Co, MG, Nio and Xpeng. Although there are already Hongqis driving around in the Netherlands, they are not included in the statistics. That handful of Hongqi’s E-HS9 wouldn’t make a huge difference in the result, though.

Forget the resistance

Although Chinese cars – in the Netherlands with the exception of the MG E-HS, all fully electric – generally offer great value for relatively little money, not everyone welcomes the rise of the Chinese car in Europe and the Netherlands. One thinks it is not a good thing for geopolitical reasons, the other fears the way in which Chinese manufacturers may handle user data and the other thinks they are downright ugly. Resisting seems pointless. Although their market share of 2.44 percent of the total number of new passenger cars registered in 2022 is quite limited, it does not stop there. Not entirely surprisingly, the bulk of the increase in the number of newly delivered Chinese cars is due to the popular Lynk & Co 01 and that distorts things. But the fact is that an avalanche of Chinese newcomers is on its way.

In fact, we expect Chinese brands to take an even bigger slice of the sales pie this year. Although BYDs, Nios and Xpengs have already been registered in the last months of 2022, the large-scale rollout will only really get underway in 2023. The Atto 3 seems to score quite well already. In addition, there are several Chinese brands and models that are coming to our country. We already mentioned Hongqi, but we also know Wey, Ora and Zeekr. Market researcher PwC recently predicted that the number of Chinese-built cars coming to Europe in 2025 will already be 800,000 on an annual basis.

Registrations of Chinese cars in the Netherlands