Chinese EV Manufacturers start to Prioritise Europe

Here they come…

China's domestic automakers aspire to establish a presence in mature markets outside of Asia, even though they have largely limited their exports so far to emerging markets.

Europe and the United States have been obvious targets. But the prolonged trade dispute between Beijing and the Trump administration has pushed them to focus more on western Europe of late instead of the U.S.

A few good examples:

Nanjing-SAIC… These are the boys that bought the MG Car Company for about twopence and now they’s making the most of it, they conducted road tests for the full-electric variant of the MG EZ, a compact crossover, in Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and the UK. In July, SAIC said it had begun shipping the EZ to the UK, Netherlands and Norway.

Great Wall

A huge Chinese business was at the Frankfurt auto show in September, Great Wall Motor announced plans to distribute vehicles under its premium brand, Wey, in western Europe within two years, starting with Germany.

Lynk & CO

In 2017, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group started sales of the first product, a compact crossover, under Lynk & CO — a brand jointly owned by the leading Chinese carmaker and its Swedish subsidiary, Volvo Car Corp.

Back then, Geely also planned to sell Lynk & CO's products, which share the platform with the Volvo XC40, in Europe and U.S. in the next few years.

Last week, Geely announced that it would start distributing Lynk & CO vehicles in Europe next year. 

Aiways

Two prototypes of a full-electric crossover developed by EV startup Aiways also arrived in time for Frankfurt after completing an 8,843-mile journey from the northwestern China city of Xi'an. Aiways plans to begin sales in Europe in April.