According to the management consultancy PwC, Europe will import more cars than it will export from 2025 onwards. “China is becoming an e-car exporter,” write the industry experts in a study published on Friday: “While Chinese manufacturers are selling more and more BEVs in Europe, both European and American manufacturers are increasingly relocating their BEV production to China.” BEV is the English abbreviation for electrically powered cars.
Last year, European car manufacturers only exported 35,000 BEVs from China to Europe, this year it is likely to be 66,000. In three years, almost 800,000 Chinese-made cars could be sold in Europe, around 330,000 of them from the Chinese plants of European car companies. “This development means that Europe could already achieve an import surplus of more than 221,000 vehicles (combustion engine and electric cars) by 2025,” says the PwC study. In 2015, Europe still had an export surplus of 1.7 million vehicles.
Europe as an automotive location is coming under pressure from several sides, said Jörn Neuhausen, Head of Electromobility at PwC Strategy
The European manufacturers struggled with delivery problems and primarily relied on expensive BEV models. The Chinese manufacturers, on the other hand, are now bringing cheap electric models with new technology and new concepts to Europe. “As a result, we see that no European model makes it into the top 5 best-selling electric cars worldwide,” said PwC industry expert Felix Kuhnert.
The German car manufacturers increased their market share in China to 4.1 percent in the first three quarters of this year. But at home they felt growing competition from Chinese manufacturers: “Although they have only played a minor role in Europe so far, they could have captured around 5 percent of the European BEV market share by 2030.”
