China’s EV surge threatens legacy automakers market dominance from GM to VW
As new, advanced EVs take over the auto market in China, legacy automakers, including Volkswagen, General Motors, Toyota, BMW, Honda, and Mercedes Benz, will all lose significant market share, according to a new Greenpeace report.
The legacy automakers, who once dominated the market in China, are now at risk of losing their positions to domestic EV makers in the region.
Will legacy automakers lose out in China over EVs?
China, the world’s largest automaker, is rapidly progressing toward electric vehicles. According to South China Morning Post, EV deliveries made up 31% of overall car sales in the first quarter of 2023, up from 28% last year.
With China accounting for roughly two-thirds of global EV sales last year, many legacy automakers have been caught off guard.
Notably, Volkswagen and Toyota, the two largest automakers in the world, have both sounded the alarm.
Volkswagen, which has maintained its position in China since around the 90s, watched its overall market share dwindle by 3.6% last year with new EVs attracting Chinese buyers.
After 15 years of being on top, BYD, the largest EV maker in China, surpassed VW in passenger car sales for the first time in Q1 to become China’s best-selling brand.
Volkswagen revealed a new €1 billion (roughly $1.1 billion) investment to establish an EV development center in the region. The automaker says the new project, “100%TechCo,” will reduce development times by 30% for new EV products and tech.
Meanwhile, Toyota’s new CEO, Koji Sato, who took over in April, said after seeing the impact at the Shanghai Auto Show:
We need to increase our speed and efforts to firmly meet the customer expectations in the Chinese market.
With the market in China “rapidly progressing,” Toyota revealed it was working to develop a new EV-dedicated platform, due out in 2026, to power its next-generation electric models.
“The era of gas and diesel vehicles is coming to an end”
The new Greenpeace report shows Volkswagen is the most vulnerable and will have the largest drop in sales.
According to the report, VW will see its share fall by another 3% to 7% by 2030. The report also forecasts GM will likely lose between 3% to 6%, Honda between 2% to 4%, Toyota between 1% and 3%, and BMW and Mercedes-Benz between 0.5% and 1.5%.
Bao Hang, a Greenpeace campaigner, said in a statement:
Toyota, Volkswagen and other carmakers that have been slow to embrace electric vehicles face significant loss of market share, even under the most conservative estimates.
The report predicts roughly one-third of the production capacity for combustion-powered vehicles will sit unused by 2030, suggesting automakers need to accelerate their timelines or face a glut in the market.
Electrek’s Take
Greenpeace expects Chinese automakers to build EVs better suited to consumer preferences. Several auto leaders have also echoed this idea.
Ford’s CEO said on the company’s Q1 earnings call, “It’s interesting to see how customers are no longer just attracted to traditional luxury brands with EVs or even hardware design anymore.” He continued explaining, “The best brands are offering integrated digital, retail, lifestyle, and experience that is software-defined.”
NIO, a leading EV startup in China, has a similar stance. The EV maker’s CEO, William Li (Li Bin), claimed even Tesla’s “Model 3 and Model Y are less complex in functions and configurations compared to Chinese car brands, such as BYD.”
What do you guys think? Are legacy automakers about to face a reckoning?
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike