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News - Market Insight - Market Insight 2025Market Insight: Chinese cars gain in EuropeChinese-made cars smash Euro sales records; Australian market share growth continues30 Jun 2025 By MATT BROGAN CHINESE-MADE cars reached their highest market share yet across Europe in May, growing sales by 60,215 units against the same time last year to take 5.4 per cent of all new vehicle registrations.
In a total market up just 1.3 per cent (to 1,116,095 units in the month of May), vehicles of Chinese origin saw brands including BYD, Chery, and MG Motor enjoy significant sales growth, the trio achieving May sales of 13,580 units, 7963 units, and 26,855 units respectively.
MG Motor remained Europe’s top-selling Chinese brand in May, as well as for the first five months of 2025, with cumulative sales of 126,493 vehicles. BYD places second with 54,986 units, and Chery (including Jaecoo and Omoda) third with 29,539 units.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, new energy vehicle sales dominated the share of Chinese-made cars sold across the European market.
Additional tariffs imposed on Chinese battery electric vehicles (BEV) since November shifted sales away from BEVs, adding a greater mix of hybrids (HEV) and plug-in hybrids (PHEV) into the mix.
Despite the redistribution in motive power type, Chinese-made BEVs remain a popular choice in the market, selling 17,530 units (up 31 per cent YoY) against 17,726 petrol-powered models (up 20 per cent YoY).
PHEV models placed third with 13,040 sales (up 874 per cent YoY) and HEVs fourth with 9560 units (up 991 per cent YoY).
While Australia’s market represented just 11.6 per cent of the total number of new vehicles soldd in Europe last year (1.23 million versus 10.63 million), the share of Chinese-made marques sold Down Under is likewise increasing steadily – now three times that of Europe when viewed as an overall percentage of the market (16.4 per cent versus 5.4 based upon May sales figures).
Australia sold 17,241 Chinese-made vehicles in May, up 3.4 per cent on the same time last year. Against the year-to-date yardstick, that number is 77,933 units, or a YoY decrease of 0.5 per cent – that figure including vehicles produced in China by marques headquartered in other countries (such as Mini, Polestar and Tesla).
Imports of traditionally strong Japanese, South Korean, and Thai-sourced new vehicles have slowed in response to the uptake of Chinese-made cars, down 6.1 per cent (to 32,110 units), 8.6 per cent (to 12,531), and 22,540 units (down 13.0 per cent) respectively across the month of May.
As a percentage of overall sales, Chinese-sourced vehicles took a 16.4 per cent market share in May, up slightly on the year-to-date average of 16 per cent.
By marque, Chinese brands favoured by Australian buyers include GWM with YTD sales of 19,725 (up 13.7 per cent) and May sales of 4272 (up 11.8 per cent). MG Motor places second with 17,778 (down 12.7 per cent) year-to-date and May sales of 3270 (down 21.4 per cent).
BYD is catching up to its state-owned rival with 15,199 YTD sales (up 94.7 per cent), 3225 of which were sold in May alone (up 68.5 per cent).
Chery placed fourth with 11,099 units YTD (up 245.1 per cent) and 2775 in May (up an impressive 283.7 per cent), while LDV languished in fifth place with 5759 YTD sales (down 19.3 per cent) and May sales of 1153 units (down 18.6 per cent).
New Chinese entrants to the Australian market in 2025 include Deepal (67 sales YTD), Geely (1023 according to the brand), JAC (139), Leapmotor (249), Omoda/Jaecoo (310), and Zeekr (339).
YTD sales of Chinese marques in Australia*:
* Sales data supplied courtesy of VFACTS.
^ Geely reports 1023 sales as of mid-June 2025.  Read more23rd of June 2025  Market Insight: Superb to go it aloneSuperb will have sub-$70K large passenger segment to itself; a good thing, says Skoda16th of June 2025  Market Insight: Small segment sales sinkingSmall passenger vehicles continue to lose traction, segment sales down 14pc since 2015 |
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