What’s new: China’s automobile exports will jump 40% in 2023, an industry expert predicted, as local carmakers ramp up their expansion overseas amid escalating competition at home.
The country’s automakers will likely ship more than 4 million vehicles this year, with the value of the shipments expected to surpass $80 billion, Sun Xiaohong, secretary-general of the automobile branch of the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products, said Friday.
The share of new-energy vehicles (NEVs) — which mainly include pure electric and hybrid vehicles — in total exports will rise to around 35% this year, Sun said, speaking at the China Auto Forum in Shanghai.
In the first five months of this year, China overtook Japan as the world’s largest automobile exporter by number of vehicles. But the country ranked third in terms of shipment value, meaning that Chinese carmakers were selling their products at an average price lower than traditional industry players such as Japanese and German firms, Sun said, citing data he obtained.
The background: Sun’s estimate comes at a time when automakers in China are scrambling to expand their global business as they face rising competition in a crowded domestic market, which suffered a brutal price war among manufacturers of both electric and fossil-fuel vehicles in the first half of this year.
Great Wall Motor Co. Ltd. is one of the latest Chinese carmakers to announce an international expansion plan. The firm revealed late last month that it will enter the Vietnamese market in August with a hybrid model, part of a broader plan to build an assembly plant for NEVs in the country in 2025.
In 2022, China’s automobile exports rose 54.4% from a year earlier to more than 3.1 million vehicles, about 22% of which were NEVs, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com) and editor Jonathan Breen (jonathanbreen@caixin.com)
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