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Fair play? The German car market amid increasing competition from China-based manufacturers – International Council on Clean Transportation


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Also, this isn’t the first time that manufacturers headquartered in Asia have entered the German car market. In the 1980s, it was manufacturers based in Japan and in the 1990s, it was manufacturers based in South Korea, and they were each able to acquire a 6%–8% market share over time. This never turned out to be a disadvantage for Germany-based brands. About half of new cars sold in Germany are from Germany-headquartered manufacturers—it’s not any different today than it was 50 years ago. What happened in the 1980s and 1990s was that mostly U.S.-headquartered manufacturers like GM, Chrysler, and Ford were squeezed out. GM and Chrysler have largely withdrawn from the European market.

So then, do Germany-headquartered manufacturers have nothing to worry about? Well, the picture is more nuanced when we drill down. While brands based in China account for only about 3% of all new car sales in Germany, for BEVs their market share is already at 8% (Figure 3). Tesla alone accounts for another 12% of the BEV market, and Germany-headquartered manufacturers sell only about 41% of all BEVs in their home market.

As Figure 3 also shows, in China, Germany-headquartered manufacturers account for a much higher market share of all cars sold (17%) than China-headquartered manufacturers do in Germany (3%). But while the BEV market is quickly gaining importance in China, German brands made up only 7% of BEV sales in China in 2023. Again, Tesla alone accounts for about 15% of all new BEV sales in China. So, Germany-headquartered manufacturers tend to run behind the ball when it comes to electric vehicles, in their home market and in China.

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