Chinese Car Brands Grew 91% in Europe in 1st Half of 2025

Last Updated on: 6th August 2025, 08:32 pm

For a thorough look at European EV sales, I recommend José Pontes’ monthly Europe EV sales reports — here’s the one for June. However, JATO Dynamics also has a report out on auto sales in 28 European markets (Europe-28), and there are a number of interesting findings regarding electric vehicles.

There are different ways to approach this, but let’s start with a bullet list of some key points.

• BEV sales rose 25% in H1 2025 compared to H1 2024 — from 951,580 to 1,193,397
  • BEV market share rose from 14% to 17%, up 3.6 percentage points
• BEV sales rose 15% in June 2025 compared to June 2024 — from 208,435 to 240,247
  • BEV market share rose from 16% to 19%, up 3.3 percentage points
• Chinese brands rose 91% in H1 2025 compared to H1 2024 — from 181,897 to 347,135
  • Their market share rose from 2.7% to 5.1%, up 2.4 percentage points
• Chinese brands rose 63% in June 2025 compared to June 2024 — from 43,477 to 70,832
  • Their market share rose from 3.3% to 5.7%, up 2.3 percentage points
• PHEV sales rose 24% in H1 2025 compared to H1 2024 — from 482,876 to 597,588
  • PHEV market share rose from 7.0% to 8.7%, up 1.7 percentage points
• PHEV sales rose 40% in June 2025 compared to June 2024 — from 85,102 to 119,351
  • PHEV market share rose from 6.5% to 9.5%, up 3.0 percentage points

This is all in the midst of a market in decline overall. The overall new car market was down 4.4% in June, and down 0.3% in the 1st half of the year. “In fact, the data shows that compared to pre-pandemic levels enjoyed in H1 2019, the market lost 1.56 million units in the first half of 2025. Proportionally, this mid-year decline exceeds the total annual losses when comparing the full year 2019 to 2024, which stood at 2.70 million units,” JATO writes.

Chinese Auto’s Rise

From that list of key stats, as you can see in the title, the biggest thing that jumped put to me was increase in Chinese automaker sales. That’s also what JATO chose to highlight first. And JATO took it a step further by pointing out major auto brands these Chinese automakers, combined, are now challenging or surpassing. “Year-to-date, these brands fall just short of Mercedes at 5.2% share and ahead of Ford at 3.8%. Combined, Chinese car brands outsold Mercedes in June.”

JATO also highlighted that it’s a handful of companies that are driving this growth, as I noted the other day more broadly when publishing “4 Chinese EV Producers with Soaring Overseas EV Sales — CHART.” JATO provides the following key points about five Chinese brands:

“Five automakers are driving this rapid growth: BYD, Jaecoo, Omoda, Leapmotor and Xpeng. BYD, which has been particularly aggressive in its pricing strategy, registered 70,500 units in H1 2025 — a year-on-year increase of 311%. In June alone, BYD registered 15,565 units, entering the top-selling 25 brands and outselling Suzuki, Mini and Jeep. The BYD Seal U was along with the Volkswagen Tiguan the top-selling PHEV in Europe in June, and the third in H1.

“Jaecoo and Omoda, both part of Chery, also made substantial progress, although this has not been due to their electric line-up. Plug-in hybrid SUVs accounted for 29% of their combined monthly registrations in June, while traditional ICE models made up almost two-thirds (63%) of the total. The Jaecoo 7 was Europe’s 9^th top-selling PHEV in June.

“Leapmotor registered over 8,300 units in June alone — driven largely by the popularity of its T03 city car and C10 SUV. Meanwhile, Xpeng has emerged as the most successful high-end Chinese car brand in Europe so far in 2025, with 8,338 units registered in the first half of the year. Its growth has been led by strong demand for the G6 SUV, which accounted for 5,615 of those registrations.”

Of course, as we can see, not all of the Chinese auto sales growth comes from electric vehicles, but a lot of it does.

Continued Rise of Electric Vehicles

The other major trend in Europe is indeed the rise of electric vehicles — both full electrics and plugin hybrid electrics. BEV sales surpassed one million units in the first half of the year for the first time. Naturally, certain markets are leading the way in that growth. Denmark had the strongest BEV growth, with H1 sales up 19 percentage points, followed by Norway (+9.2 percentage points), Belgium (+8.0 percentage points), Finland (+7.2 percentage points), and Austria (+5.6 percentage points).

With a few big and obvious exceptions, most car brands are seeing BEV sales increase in Europe. “As a segment, BEVs continue to grow in importance for most of Europe’s biggest carmakers. JATO Dynamics’ data shows that, excluding Tesla, BYD is the OEM most dependent on the segment, which represent almost two-thirds (64%) of its total sales mix,” JATO writes. “However, similar to SAIC — which saw its BEV share drop to 15.4% — BYD’s BEV share has declined compared to H1 2024. This shift reflects a strategic pivot toward other powertrains, as both manufacturers sought to mitigate the impact of tariffs imposed on their BEVs.” As it turns out, when you add big tariffs on one powertrain and not others, automakers move away from selling vehicles with that powertrain (BEVs in this case). It’s still a bit wild that the EU has gone and implemented a hit job on BEVs.

“In contrast, Ford saw a notable increase, with BEVs rising from 4.5% of its sales in H1 2024 to 13.7% in H1 2025. Volkswagen Group’s BEV share grew from 10.1% to 18.7% over the same period, while Hyundai-Kia saw an increase from 12.6% to 19.1%. Growth was also recorded at BMW Group and Renault Group, with more modest gains observed at Stellantis, Toyota, and Mercedes-Benz.” Well, as we can see, perhaps other automakers are now seeing significantly more BEV sales as a result of Chinese automakers getting pushed back.

Tesla is the big BEV seller that took the biggest hit in the first half of the year in Europe, though. June was the first month that the Tesla Model Y saw a year-over-year sales increase, and it was only +0.1%. Across the first half of the year, Model Y sales were down 33% year over year. That’s the same percentage Tesla sales were down overall. Tesla’s share of the overall auto market dropped from 2.4% in H1 2024 to 1.6% in H1 2025. “The updated Tesla Model Y has so far failed to provide the expected sales boost for the brand,” Felipe Munoz, Global Analyst at JATO Dynamics noted. “At the same time, competition from BYD and Volkswagen Group is making it harder for Tesla to maintain its leadership position.” Indeed.