©Mohammad Fathollahi via Unsplash
Chinese automakers are beginning to look across borders for suitable locations to start manufacturing cars. In particular, Latin America and Europe are attracting China's attention.
The huge domestic market is becoming saturated in China. To keep growing, Chinese carmakers want to start producing in Europe. In addition to imports from China, they now want to increase their market share by producing cars locally. By doing so, they will also escape EU import duties on electric models.
Reuters reports that there will be several "own" factories on European soil, but that they are also looking at utilizing the capacity of already existing production facilities of European brands.
In a report by consulting firm AlixPartners, experts estimate that Chinese carmakers will roughly triple their foreign production in the next few years. They say this will happen mainly in Latin America and Europe. AlixPartners predicts, with seemingly fairly high certainty, that the Chinese will nearly triple their production abroad to 3.4 million vehicles by 2030.
Stellantis chief Antonio Filosa already believes that European carmakers have more to gain by cooperating with the Chinese, Reuters reports.
As a matter of fact, the Chinese auto industry seems to be conquering the European market at high speed. Chinese brands sold 149,094 cars in Europe in March this year, 97 percent more than in the same month of 2025. MG was number one with 39,717 cars, followed by BYD and Chery. Avoiding European import duties by producing locally seems to be making China a lot of money.
©Mohammad Fathollahi via Unsplash - illustration image of a BYD factory