Electric Vehicle Market Share

In 2020, China sold 1.3 million EVs — 41% of global EV sales.  That number seemed impressive at the time.  It looks quaint now.  China’s NEV market hit approximately 16 million units in 2025, representing nearly 50% of all new cars sold domestically.  BYD alone sold 4.6 million vehicles globally — more than Ford sold in its entirety.  China now controls 69% of the global EV battery market through CATL and BYD combined.  This did not happen by accident.

Tu Le, Founder and Managing Director of Sino Auto Insights, a global mobility advisory firm founded in Beijing in 2017, said, “China’s dominance in EVs is not a product story.  It is a supply chain story, an industrial policy story, and a geopolitical story — with a car on top.”

China's EV push is an industrial policy executed with the patience and precision that Western democracies structurally cannot replicate.  The objective was never to sell more cars.  It was to leapfrog the internal combustion engine — a technology where Germany, Japan, and the United States held century-old competitive advantages — and establish dominance in the next platform before the incumbents could react.  It worked.  China controls the battery supply chain from lithium extraction through cathode chemistry to cell manufacturing and pack assembly.  It controls 80% of global lithium refining capacity, 70% of cobalt processing, and the dominant share of rare earth processing essential for EV motors.  The car is the visible product.  The supply chain is the moat.

Beijing subsidised EV purchases, built charging infrastructure at scale, mandated EV quotas for manufacturers, and provided cheap financing, tax breaks, and preferential land access to domestic producers.  The EU’s anti-subsidy investigation concluded exactly this — and imposed an additional 17% tariff on BYD on top of the standard 10% import tariff.  BYD’s response was to open factories in Hungary, Turkey, and Brazil — manufacturing inside the tariff wall rather than exporting over it.

Tesla’s China market share fell from 6% in 2024 to 4.9% in 2025. EU sales collapsed 38.8% in the first eleven months of 2025.  Tesla’s net profit fell 40.5% year-on-year in the first three quarters.  Its US market share hit an eight-year low of 38% in August 2025 — down from approximately 80% in 2020.  Three forces compressed Tesla simultaneously.  First, Chinese domestic competition intensified beyond BYD — Geely surged 90%, Xiaomi EV grew 200.9%, Huawei-powered models exploded.  The Chinese market became a 150-brand price war that eroded margins across every participant, including Tesla.  Second, Elon Reeve Musk’s political activities generated sustained consumer boycotts in Europe and the United States — Tesla showrooms faced protests, vandalism, and brand damage that no marketing budget could quickly repair.  Third, BYD competed on price at quality parity.  The BYD Seal sits at €42,700 to €48,200 in Europe — comparable to or below equivalent Tesla models — absorbing the EU tariff and still offering competitive pricing.  Battery pack costs fell to $115 per kWh in 2024.  At US$80 to US$99 by 2026, Chinese manufacturers achieve price parity with petrol cars without subsidies.  That eliminates the last structural barrier to mass adoption.

Volkswagen delivered 1.9 million vehicles in China in the first three quarters of 2025 — down 4% — now below its Western European volumes.  VW’s largest single market is contracting as domestic Chinese brands consume its share.  FAW-Volkswagen retail sales fell 4.8% in 2025. European automotive exports to China fell sharply in both volume and value.  The German response — joint ventures with Xpeng and Horizon Robotics, a full R&D centre in Hefei — is the correct strategic direction.  It is also an admission that German automotive engineering alone is no longer sufficient competitive advantage in the world’s largest car market.  Chinese brands now hold 7% of EU market share, up from 5% in 2024.  In May 2025, BYD registered more EVs in Europe than Tesla for the first time.  In February 2026, it did so again.  The tariff wall slowed the entry.  It did not stop it.

Global EV sales are forecast to reach 40 to 50% of total car sales by 2030 — up from approximately 20 million units in 2025.  Chinese automakers collectively commanded 43% of global EV market share through August 2025.  Five Chinese brands — BYD, Geely, SAIC, Changan, and Chery — are expanding across Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa simultaneously.  The geopolitical dimension is explicit.  EV dominance gives China control of the technology platform, the battery supply chain, and the manufacturing cost curve for the primary consumer durable of the next fifty years.  It reduces China’s dependence on Middle East oil — a strategic vulnerability the country has been managing since the 1990s.  And it gives Beijing an export industry that generates trade surpluses without the currency and IP friction that semiconductor and defence exports attract.  China did not enter the EV market to compete with Tesla.  It entered to render the entire ICE-era competitive landscape irrelevant.

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Terence Nunis | Executive Chairman, Equinox Zenith & Red Sycamore | Author, The 1% Playbook: The Billionaire Cheat Code