Chinese brands are an absolute rarity on German roads. Only 0.1 to 0.2 percent of passenger cars in Germany are manufactured in China in the strict sense, according to an analysis of figures from the Federal Motor Transport Authority by the dpa. Competition from China has recently made itself felt in the global sales figures of German car manufacturers, but this is not yet the case on domestic roads. An overview shortly before the start of the Auto Shanghai trade fair next week.
This is how many – or rather how few – there are
If you add up the Chinese brands reported by the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) in its quarterly inventory statistics, you get a total of 70,046 for January 1, 2025 – out of a total of 49.3 million passenger cars. By far the largest share, at 49,557, goes to MG Roewe – a brand that many people are probably unaware is Chinese, according to auto expert Stefan Bratzel. Even in its German brand presence, the Saic Group-owned manufacturer prominently references the British origins of the brand it purchased in the 2000s, whose cars are now produced in China.
Lynk and Great Wall Motor (GWM) follow far behind with just over 6,000 cars each, and BYD with a good 4,500. Nio comes in at 1,700, while Aiways, Xpeng, Leapmotor, and Maxus are in the hundreds.
That's not all
The KBA does not list all car brands individually in its inventory. In the current quarterly inventory statistics, a good 360,000 passenger cars fall under "Other"; this is likely to include a small number of Chinese cars from brands with very low production figures.
If we look at Chinese brands in a broader sense – i.e. including Polestar and Volvo, which now belong to Geely, and even Smart, which is now a joint venture between Mercedes-Benz and Geely – the figures are in the high hundreds of thousands or even a good million. However, the vast majority of these cars date from before the Chinese entered the market.
Electric in particular
What is striking about the Chinese vehicle fleet in Germany is its consistent focus on electric vehicles. Looking again at the brands in the narrower sense, there are 50,196 purely electric vehicles – that is 72 percent. But even in the German electric car fleet, they account for only 3 percent.
More are coming – but slowly
Most Chinese brands in the narrower sense have only recently entered the German market. A year ago, Xpeng and Leapmotor were not even listed individually in the KBA statistics. The remaining seven had a combined total of just under 57,000 on January 1, 2024, meaning that their stock grew by 12,500 last year, which is a rather small increase. This is because Chinese brands also accounted for only around one percent of new registrations recently.
But why are Chinese brands, which experts also attest to being of good quality, not catching on in the German market? There are several reasons for this.
Lack of sales and service network
Chinese brands have underestimated "the complexity of the German market," says industry expert Bratzel. If they want to be successful, they need to focus much more intensively on this and be prepared to take a long-term view. One problem is that the sales and service networks are not yet well developed. This causes difficulties, for example, when customers want to trade in their old car or finance their new one. It also deters the important fleet market.
Wrong approach to marketing
"The Chinese don't understand Europe and customers in Germany," says Bratzel's colleague Ferdinand Dudenhoffer. "Take BYD, for example: they arrive with a ship carrying thousands of cars, advertise on the sidelines of the European Soccer Championship, make a big deal with a rental company for 100,000 cars, and think that's all it takes to do business." But jumping from one campaign to the next without a strategy doesn't work.
"Here, drivers know their brand and don't just switch for no reason," says Dudenhoffer. In China, it's different because many customers are new and sometimes inexperienced buyers without long-term relationships with a brand.
Set too high
For Bratzel, the strategy many Chinese manufacturers are using to gain a foothold in the European and German markets has also "gone a bit wrong." This is also due to their growing self-confidence. "They want to show what they have and are willing to pay for it," he says, referring to the offerings from BYD and Nio, for example, which are partly in the premium segment. However, many customers are still skeptical about Chinese brands. "The price has to be slightly below that of the established suppliers," he says. Kia and Hyundai, for example, were successful with this approach at the time.
The fact that MG Roewe is by far the largest Chinese supplier in Germany so far seems to prove Bratzel right. The brand offers significantly cheaper cars.
Overall, Bratzel does not want to overstate German customers' skepticism toward Chinese brands. "They have a completely different level of quality now," he says, looking back to the days when Chinese cars failed European crash tests catastrophically. Dudenhoffer's diagnosis also points in this direction: "Chinese cars are good, but the marketing is a disaster. They simply don't understand their customers, which is why they are burning through so much money."
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