Share of Chinese and foreign car sales in China
- In order to analyze the decline in influence of European carmakers in car production in China, Inovev counted the number of passenger cars produced in China by origin from 2005 to 2025. A graph was constructed from the production figures of cars produced in China, according to the origin of the brands: 1/ China 2/ Europe 3/ Other regions of the world.
- European car production in China peaked in 2017-2018, reaching approximately 5.5 million units per year, following uninterrupted growth since 2005. Since then, this volume has steadily declined. By 2025, production is projected to fall below 4 million units, while the overall production volume across all nationalities is expected to increase from 25 million to 30 million units between 2017 and 2025. Concurrently, Chinese carmakers' production volume has surged from 10 million to over 20 million units.
- The production volume of American, Japanese and Korean brands also experienced a production peak in 2017-2018, as with European brands, with a volume of 8.5 million units per year, then this volume declined sharply and continuously, falling below 5.5 million units in 2025.
- The decline of foreign carmakers did not happen at the same time. Stellantis began to decline from 2015, then it was the turn of Ford and Hyundai-Kia from 2017, then GM from 2018, then Volkswagen from 2019, then Honda from 2020 and Nissan from 2021, the last to fall being BMW and Mercedes.